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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP : 

ILLUSTRATED IN 

THE LIFE OF JUMON. 



A DISCOURSE DELIVERED BEFORE THE MARY- 
LAND UNION ASSOCIATION, NOV. 5, 1851. 



WITH AN ADDRESS ON MISSIONS. 



BY R. W. CUSHMAX, 

AUTHOR OF "A PURE CHRISTIANITY THE WORLD'S ONLY HOPE," ETC. ETC. 



^tjtlntoljiljtrt : 

AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 

118 ARCH STREET. 



JiCz 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S54. by the 

AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in 
and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



STEREOTYPED BY GEORGE CHARLES. 
PRINTED BY KING .^b BAIRD. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



The delay which has taken place in the publication of 
the following pages may be laid to the account of their 
author's unwillingness to risk the charge of doing an 
injury while seeking to do good. 

The manuscript was tendered, in conformity with 
wishes expressed, to the American Baptist Publication 
Society, at the time of its delivery. Its examination was 
then declined from fear that its publication would be 
adverse to the interests and wishes of the family of Dr. 
Judson ; such publications being considered as calculated 
to interfere with the sale of the expected Memoir. That 
fear has recently proved to have been founded in misap- 
prehension. And, as it was the author's aim in the pre- 
paration of the discourse to produce an effect the reverse 
of that which was feared, he now places it again at the 
disposal of the Society for publication, in compliance 
with the request of the body before which it was de- 
livered. 

Boston, October 1, 1853. 



PREFACE. 



The request for the publication of the follow- 
ing discourse is complied with, in the hope that 
it may aid in extending a desire for further know- 
ledge of the extraordinary man, the leading traits 
of whose character it attempts to portray and 
illustrate. 

In this way it may serve as an avant-courier to 
the Memoir. A supplanter, in any case, it can- 
not be. Whoever reads what is given him in this 
discourse, will not be satisfied without knowing 
more. It is also hoped that, by its lighter and 
more disposable form, it may reach into quarters 
where the Memoir might not enter ; and awaken 
an interest in the Missionary cause in hearts un- 
used to much feeling on the subject ; and thus 
win new supporters for it at a time when it has 
the prospect of unprecedented prosperity, and 
when it will consequently need greatly augmented 
means of operation. 

The Missionary enterprise has reached, in Bur- 
niah, a stage at which it seems likely to demand 
1* (5) 



6 



PREFACE. 



great expansion. If the hopes which have been 
awakened by recent events are to be realized, our 
churches are to have the peerless, fadeless glory 
offered them of giving the blessings of civilization 
to eight millions of people. It is now not impro- 
bable that an open field may be tendered us in 
Burmah, broad as that nation's territory, for 
battle with idolatry and barbarism ; and that we 
may be invited to spread the blessings of science 
and the arts throughout the empire. We know 
that it is in the power of the monarch to make the 
offer, if it shall be in his heart to do so. And 
we know " that the king's heart is in the hand of 
the Lord, as the rivers of water : He turneth it 
whithersoever He will." And we know that it 
has been turned toward the mission. 

We know further, that if the monarch were to 
withdraw his favor from Buddhism, it would dis- 
solve, in that country, before the light of Chris- 
tianity and of science, like the mists of the morn- 
ing. It could not maintain its position a year 
without the royal protection. It is said by 
Snodgrass, in his account of the Burmese war, 
(of 1824-6,) that "the regard of the people for 
their present worship is so slight that the king 
of Ava could, by a simple order, change the reli- 
gion of the nation, without a murmur." This 
potentate has invited our missionaries to his 



PREFACE. 



7 



capital, and promised them liberty to preach the 
Gospel freely.* 

Are our churches prepared for what may be 
before them ? And will not those who have 
waited for evidence of the favor of God to 
Missionary effort among the heathen, consider 
the present indications as sufficient authority, and 
sufficient encouragement, for uniting, without 
farther delay, with their brethren in the missionary 
work ? Let it be known what Judson has suf- 
fered and done in preparing the way ; what others 
have suffered and done with him; what God has 
wrought by them ; and what prospects — prospects 
vast to amazement — He has opened to us. And 
if there shall be one Baptist in this country stand- 
ing aloof from the cause of missions after that, 
then let the sacramental host of God's elect 

* Since the above was written the aspect of affairs has 
changed ; but not darkened. The king referred to has been 
dethroned, and is succeeded by one, of whose disposition 
towards our missionaries and towards Christianity, we know 
nothing,' it maybe conjectured to be unfriendly, from sup- 
posed implication with British power. But, whatever may be 
the disposition of the Burman government, the choicest por- 
tion of the territory, and about half the people, are now irre- 
vocably beyond its control; and are as accessible to the influ- 
ences of Christianity and civilization as any portion of our 
own land, so far as government is concerned. 

October, 1853. 



8 



PREFACE. 



"note that man, and have no company with him, 
that he may be ashamed/' The very success of 
the work will call for the strength of all : and 
that professor of "Jesus Christ's religion' 7 who 
refuses to "come up to the help of the Lord, 
to the help of the Lord against the mighty," may 
not only be ashamed, but he may well fear the 
" bitter curse" invoked on such as he, by the 
angel of the Lord. Oh, for more men, of tone 
and temper like Judson's, to take the field ; and 
more men of liberality, like Cobb's, in the churches, 
to sustain and furnish them with the means of 
labor there ! 

It may, perhaps, seem to some who shall read 
the following pages, that the author does not 
duly appreciate the part which others have borne 
in our missions in Burmah. He is aware of the 
strong propensity there is in the great majority 
of men towards " unitarianism :'' the disposition 
to exalt some one individual of a fraternity at the 
expense of all the rest ; but he hopes he is not 
chargeable with this disposition himself. He 
thinks he should be as happy in Saturn, sur- 
rounded by its seven moons, as on earth with one. 

If he has not spoken of other noble spirits who 
have toiled and suffered with the subject of this 
discourse, it is not because he is not sensible 
of their exalted worth, and of the importance 



PREFACE. 



9 



and value of their labors. They are men whose 
names the church will cherish to the end of time : 
they will have their record on high ; nor will they 
lose their meed of praise below. The author 
had a single object before him : " Grace and 
Apostleship, as illustrated in the Life of Judson." 
The unity of his theme, as well as the limitation 
of the time allotted to a discourse, forbade a 
wider scope of observation. 

Washington City, Nov. 12, 1851. 



A DISCOURSE. 



Phil. hi. 17. 

Brethren, be followers together with me, and mark those 
who walk so as ye have us for an ensample. 

In other words : Be joint imitators of 
me, and mark well the course of life of 
those who make us their example. 

The Apostle would have the Philippian 
Christians, who were mostly converts from 
Paganism, cultivate a right spirit and live 
a proper life. And there were two modes 
by which he might aid them to the attain- 
ment of that end. The first was, The set- 
ting forth of the jwecepts of Christianity. 
In these he had without doubt well in- 
structed them. 

The other mode was, The illustration of 
Christianity in his own life. 

That they had already enjoyed the ad- 
vantage of this mode, also, is bevond doubt. 

(ii) 



12 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



He could say to these as lie had said to the 
Tkessalonians ten years before : " Ye are 
witnesses, and God also, how holily and 
justly and unblaniably we behaved our- 
selves among you that believe : as ye 
know how we exhorted and comforted 
and charged every one of you, as a father 
dotk his children, tkat ye would walk 
worthy of God, who hath called you unto 
his kingdom and glory."* 

If it must be admitted tkat Paul was not 
a perfect pattern, inasmuch as no man is 
perfect, then we may presume tkat ke 
would be understood in our text to say, as 
he had said to the Corinthian Christians 
six years before : "Be ye followers of me, 
even as I also am of Christ, "f 

As Paul was now no longer present with 
the Philippian Christians, to be the object 
of their observation, he turns the attention 
of the church to those among; them who 
were most like him. Mark them, says he, 
and emulate those traits of Christian cha- 
racter which they have most successfully 
copied from me. 

* 1 Thess. ii. 10-12. f 1 Cor. xi. 1. 

t 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOX. 



13 



Noble worth it must have been that could 
thus challenge scrutiny, and invite imi- 
tation ! 

"We thus have a beautiful series of moral 
patterns and copyists — "joint imitators," — 
varying in degrees of excellence. God is 
the only absolute standard of moral worth. 
But " God was manifest in the flesh." In 
Christ, we have "the brightness of the Fa- 
ther's glory and the express image of his 
person." And he was not only the illustra- 
tion of what God is, but the type of what 
man should be. He stands at the head of 
the series, God's representative rather than 
imitator; and God has "predestined" the 
rest " to be conformed to the image of his 
Son." Below him are the Apostles ; " bap- 
tized with the baptism that he was baptized 
with," and lustrous with his virtues: not 
only Peter and James and John, and the 
others who had " continued with him in his 
temptations," but also the Apostle "born 
out of due time," the convert of Tarsus, to 
whom he had " shown how great things he 
must suffer for his name's sake." 

Below them again, but close in their rear, 
2 



14 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



are the choice specimens of Christian cha- 
racter in the churches. And, scattered all 
along the ascending grades of moral excel- 
lence, are the different characters whom 
the grace of God has arrested in their 
courses of iniquity, and brought out of 
" darkness into light, and from the power 
of Satan unto God." 

The eve of each, however, is upward and 
onward; and " Excelsior " his motto. " Be- 
hold," says God to them from his throne 
in heaven, " Behold my beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased :" and each, " for- 
getting the things which are behind and 
reaching forth to those which are before," 
is pressing towards the mark for the prize 
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 

To the wisdom of this mode of seeking 
the improvement of character, all ages have 
given their testimony. "Who does not know 
that one bright exemplification of Christian 
virtues has done more in stimulating effort 
after higher degrees of excellence than 
whole years of teaching ? Facts have more 
power than theory in creating faith, even 
in matters of scientific truth: and so, a 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOX. 



15 



Christian life lias often been a convincing 
demonstration where argument has been 
employed in vain. There is something in 
example calculated at once to work convic- 
tion of practicability, where the attainment 
has before seemed to be impossible; and 
also to excite to exertion. And thus it is, 
that delineation of character has ever been 
a favorite mode of appeal to the public 
heart; that biography has ever been the 
most popular form of history ; and that the 
church has always sought to save from the 
tide of oblivion, and to set on high, the 
brightest examples of what men should be, 
for the contemplation of those who should 
come after them. , 

In appropriating the present occasion, 
then, to the study of the character of one 
whose devotion to the service of Christ, and 
the welfare of mankind, has filled the 
churches with his praise, we may consider 
ourselves not only as conforming to the 
spirit of our text, but as employing one of 
the most hopeful means of doing good. 

Adoniram Judson spent his life in mis- 
sionary service in a heathen land. In his 



16 GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIF 



devotion to that service, and by his useful- 
ness in it, lie lias won a name that will live 
to the end of time. His example will in- 
spire multitudes of men yet unborn, to lay 
their lives on the altar of Christ ; and will 
hold them steady to their purpose, amid 
discouragement and sufferings. And "the 
Apostle of Burmah," through his example 
of self-sacrifice, speaking to Christians of 
all lands, will rebuke in them an inglorious 
love of ease, and the spirit of covetousness ; 
and encourage them in "seeking for gloryi 
honor and immortality by a patient con- 
tinuance in well doing." 

It cannot be expected in the time allowed 
for this exercise that anything like a jierfect 
outline, even, should be given of a life so 
long, and so full of labor. I shall therefore 
content myself, after a few words of his 
history, with calling yonr attention to some 
of those traits of character as they shine out 
in some points of his history, which merit 
for him a companionship with the Apos- 
tles, as an object of Christian imitation. 

Dr. Judson was born in Maiden, near 
Boston, on the 9th of August, 1788, and 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOX. 



17 



was the son of a Congregational minister. 
He was educated at Brown University, and 
graduated, I believe, with the first honors of 
his class. He then entered the Theological 
Seminary at Andover; not for the purpose 
of preparing for the ministry, as he was not 
at that time a professor of religion, but for 
the purpose of giving himself up to an ex- 
amination of the truths and doctrines of 
Christianity. It appears that he had had 
strong doubts of its divine origin ; but felt 
the conviction that, if it was truly from 
God, it demanded from him the consecra- 
tion of his heart and life " to the obedience 
of the faith." 

He there spent two years in study ; dur- 
ing which time he became a converted 
man, and formed the resolution to devote 
his life to the work of preaching Christ to 
some nation yet in heathenism. 

The churches of this country, at that 
time, were asleep to the duty of sending 
the gospel to the heathen. Through his 
influence, united with that of three or four 
other students who sympathized with him, 

an organization was formed, now known 

9* 



18 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



through, the world as the American Board 
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 
under whose auspices he sailed from this t 
country for England, to seek the aid of an 
English Missionary Society, in the prose- 
cution of his purpose ; so little confidence 
had those good men, who favored his 
wishes, in their power to procure from the 
churches of this country the means of his 
outfit and support. This was in the time 
of those troubles with England and France 
which led to the war of 1812. 

He was taken prisoner on his way to 
England ; was carried to France ; was re- 
leased ; went to England ; secured, in part, 
the object of his mission, and returned to 
this country. And, on the 19th of Febru- 
ary, 1812, embarked with his wife, the im- 
mortal Ann Hasseltine Judson, for the 
East. 

On his passage he took up the examina- 
tion of a subject which holds a place sub- 
ordinate, as to its importance, to that which 
had been the great object of his inquiries 
before his conversion ; but a subject, never- 
theless, which was now to be one of prac- 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 



19 



tical importance, if he was to be so far suc- 
cessful in his efforts for the salvation of the 
heathen as to have occasion to form churches 

i 

among them. I allude to Christian baptism ; 
in its subject and its mode. The result of 
his examination was, a conviction that a 
pure Christianity admitted the baptism of 
none but believers ; and that the meaning 
of Christ, in his command, was not con- 
formed to by anything short of immersion. 
On his arrival, therefore, in India, he 
sought baptism for himself and his wife, 
who had shared in his studies and convic- 
tions, at the hands of the English Baptist 
missionaries at Serampore. 

This act necessarily separated him from 
the denomination in which he had been born, 
reared, and educated ; and from the Society 
in this country on which he was dependent 
for his support. 

He had been but a few weeks in India, be- 
fore the British East India Company, which, 
at that time, was opposed to any effort to 
disturb the paganism of their possessions, 
ordered him to depart from the country ; giv- 
ing him permission, however, to go to the Isle 



20 GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



of France. From the Isle of France he 
went to Madras ; and from thence to Ran- 
goon, in Burmah. Here, after being tossed 
about for almost a year and a half, he ar- 
rived in July, 1813. Here he commenced 
the study of the Burman language, and pre- 
pared to enter on the great business to 
which he had consecrated his life. 

After the lapse of several years spent in 
the acquisition of the language, and the 
preaching of the gospel at Rangoon, he 
went to Ava, the capital of the empire, to 
obtain, if possible, the countenance of roy- 
alty, free permission to preach the gospel ; 
and protection from persecution of those in 
the empire who should embrace it. Dis- 
appointed in this, he returned to Rangoon, 
and pursued the work of his mission, as 
best he could, till near the time when the 
war broke out between Great Britain and 
Burmah. 

As he and his associates had been able 
to live and labor at Rangoon so long with- 
out the countenance of the government, and 
as Dr. Price, an American Missionary, was 
enjoying the favor of the monarch, as a 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 



21 



physician, at Ava; Mr. Judson determined 
to make a trial of preaching the Gospel 
"under the shadow of the throne." There, 
on the breaking out of the War, he was 
seized ; thrown into prison ; loaded with 
chains ; dragged from one prison to another, 
and exposed to every indignity and cruelty 
which it is possible for nature to bear, for 
nineteen months, in almost daily expecta- 
tion of death from the hands of the execu- 
tioner. He was at length released, and em- 
ployed as an interpreter in negotiations of 
peace with the British : and, on the cession 
of a portion of the Burman territory, he 
located at Amherst, under the protection 
of the British flag. 

There, and at Maulmain, to which the 
seat of the British governor was afterwards 
removed, and which was also made the 
head-quarters of our Mission in Burmah, he 
spent the remainder of his days in exclusive 
devotion to missionary labors, having re- 
fused an appointment under the British 
government, as their interpreter, at §3000 
a year. 

In the year 1845, after an absence of 



22 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



thirty-three years, compelled by the sink- 
ing health of his second wife, rather than 
influenced by any desire of intermitting his 
long protracted toil, he visited his native 
land. He returned to his work the follow- 
ing year, and continued at his post of duty 
till disease and labor had brought him to 
the borders of the grave. 

Against the judgment and wishes of his 
friends, he sought, alone, the recovery of his 
health by a sea voyage. He left Maulmain 
for the Isle of Bourbon ; and died when but 
a few days at sea. And while the spirit, 
now ripened for immortality, took its flight 
for the bosom of its God, his mortal re- 
mains were committed to the deeps of the 
ocean. 

Mr. Judson was called to part with his 
first wife by death, soon after his escape 
from the power of the Burman government, 
at the close of the war. His second wife, 
for the recovery of whose health it was 
that he left Burmah for this country, died 
on the passage, and was buried at St. He- 
lena. Before his departure from this coun- 
try he married his third wife, who survives 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 



23 



him; and who has recently returned to 
this country. 

I have thus given a very rapid glance at 
the leading events of his life, that you may 
he able the better to understand what we 
have to say of his character. 

From what has already been said, it has 
been seen that we consider the missionary 
enterprise to have enjoyed, in Dr. Judson, 
the benefit of the service of no common 
order of talent. Had it been his desire to 
reach a distinguished position of wealth, or 
fame, in a secular calling ; or had he been 
ambitious of honor and influence in the 
churches of his native land; he had the 
powers to reach that position, or to gratify 
that desire. An illustration of the activity 
of his mind, and of that love of labor ', which, 
in the youthful student, is the sure presage 
of distinction, is extant in a treatise in aid 
of education, prepared while in college. 

Of his power in the pulpit, while yet but 
a scion of manhood, I have heard the peo- 
ple of Plymouth — the place of his father's 
settlement at the time of his entrance into 
the ministry — speak with rapture, as of one 



24 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



who seemed inspired. Eternity, they said, 
seemed open as lie spoke : — its realities re- 
vealed ! 

His capabilities for shining in the path 
of literature, had he chosen it, were beyond 
question. His power in description — a 
power involving some of the highest at- 
tributes of talent, the possession of which 
has been to so many a wizard wand for the 
command of both fame and fortune — was 
often admired in his earlier communica- 
tions to the Missionary journals of the 
time. 

As a specimen, illustrating at once his 
power of genius, to see things as they are, 
and to point them to others' sight ; and his 
power of faith to look into the future, and 
see and describe them as they will be ; take 
the following account of his survey of the 
monuments of Burman idolatry.* 

* Pah-gan. or Pa-gahm, on the east bank of the Irra- 
waddy, forty miles below Ava, and two hundred and 
sixty above Rangoon, was once the residence of a long 
line of kings ; but was abandoned as the metropolis from 
some religious notion : probably from an idea of its sa- 
credness as the cradle of the religion of the empire. 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 25 

"Jan. 18, 1820.— Took a survey of the 
splendid pagodas and extensive ruins in 
the environs of this once famous city. 
Ascended, as far as possible, some of the 
highest edifices, and, at the height of 100 
feet, perhaps, beheld all the country around 
covered with temples and monuments of 
every sort and size : — some in utter ruin, 
some fast decaying, and some exhibiting 
marks of recent attention and repair. 
The remains of the ancient wall of the 
city stretched beneath us. The pillars of 
the gates, and. many a grotesque, decapi- 
tated relic of antiquity, checkered the 
motley scene. All conspired to suggest 
those elevated and mournful ideas which 
are attendant on a view of the decaying re- 
mains of ancient grandeur ; and, though not 
comparable to such ruins as those of Pal- 
myra and Balbec, are still deeply interesting 
to the antiquary, and more deeply interesting 
to the Christian missionary. Here, about 
800 years ago, the religion of Booclh was 
first publicly recognized and established as 
the religion of the empire. Here, then, 
Ah-rah-han, the first Boodhist apostle of 
3 



I 



26 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



Burniah, under the patronage of king 
Anan-ra-tha-raen-zan, disseminated the doc- 
trines of Atheism, and taught his disciples 
to pant after annihilation, as the supreme 
good. Some of the ruins before our eves, 
were probably the remains of pagodas de- 
signed by himself. "We looked back on 
the centuries of darkness that are passed. 
"We looked forward ; and Christian hope 
would fain brighten the prospect. Perhaps 
we stand on the dividing line of the em- 
pires of darkness and light. 0, shade of 
Shen Ah-rah-han ! weep o'er thy falling 
fanes ; retire froni the scenes of thy past 
greatness ! But thou smilest at my feeble 
voice. Linger, then, thy little remaining 
day. A voice, mightier than mine, ' a 
still small voice,' will, ere long, sweep 
away every vestige of thy dominion. The 
churches of Jesus will soon supplant these 
idolatrous monuments ; and the chanting 
of the devotees of Boodh will die away be- 
fore the Christian hymn of praise." 

That these were not the outbursts of a 
youthful enthusiasm merely, which had 
girded on the harness for battle without 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 27 



having counted the cost, we shall see in 
the sequel. 

As a first point of resemblance, then, be- 
tween the primitive apostle to the Gentiles, 
and the pioneer of American missions in the 
distant East, we note the order of talent 
consecrated to the salvation of the heathen, 
and the sacrifice which that consecration 
cost him. 

And, as we draw the parallel, let us bless 
God, for the power of that grace which 
converted, in the one case, the boasting 
pharisee, and in the other, the Christian 
skeptic, into an humble Christian, and " a 
chosen vessel unto Christ to bear his name 
before Gentiles and kings." 

Was Paul born in circumstances which 
opened before him the paths of honor and 
profit, and usefulness, among his own 
countrymen ? So was Judson. 

Had he a high order of natural talent ? 
So had Judson. Had he the advantage of 
the best education which his country could 
give him? So had Judson. Could he 
pride himself on his religious connections 
and advantages ? So could Judson. And, 



28 GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



as I recall the circumstances of his early 
life, born as he was in the bosom of the 
Pilgrim churches, dedicated to God in bap- 
tism, and reared among the memorials of 
the race whom God led out from the old 
world to worship Him " on the wild New 
England shore ;" and as I hear him bidding 
adieu to all worldly honors, and pleasures, 
and gains, and friends, and home, and 
country, in his father's pulpit, in sight of 
the Plymouth rock, and the graves of his 
forefathers ; I scarcely feel the need of 
changing a word of that piece of personal 
history which we have in the connection of 
our text : "If any other man thinketh that 
he hath whereof he might trust in the 
flesh, I more : circumcised the eighth day, 
of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Ben- 
jamin, a' Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touch- 
ing the law, a Pharisee ; concerning zeal, per- 
secuting the church; touching the righte- 
ousness of the law, blameless. But what 
things were gain to me, these I counted 
loss for Christ.' ' 

It is difficult for us who have x not been 
called to make the sacrifice, to appreciate 



ILLUSTRATED IX JTDSOX. 



29 



the strength of faith, the love of the 
Saviour, the crucifixion to the world, the 
conversion of the souls of men which are 
required in one's devotion of himself for 
life to foreign missionary service. 

It requires no ordinary degree of piety, 
even when, as at the present day, the man 
goes forth to a field of labor which has 
been in a measure prepared to his hand; 
when he goes anticipating the society and 
co-operation of others who have gone be- 
fore him ; when he goes without appre- 
hension of personal danger ; and goes 
knowing he shall be cared for, and his 
wants supplied by organized associations 
of the churches at home, who are praying 
for his safety and success. Even then, 
with all these mitigating considerations, 
there is enough that must be given up. to 
Wring the heart ; and enough that must be 
met. to try the courage, the philanthropy, 
and the faith of a man. as they are seldom 
tried in the home service of the gospel. 
Even then the missionary, as he turns and 
looks back for the last time on the dear 
scenes of his past life, finds a struggle in 



30 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



his bosom which others cannot know, 
while he pronounces his tearful farewell : 

" Home, thy joys are passing lovely — 
Joys no stranger heart can tell ; 
Happy home, indeed I love thee : 
Can I, can I say, i Farewell ?' 

Can I leave thee, 
Far in heathen lands to dwell ? 

Scenes of sacred peace and pleasure, 

Holy days and Sabbath bell, 
Richest, brightest, sweetest treasure, 

Can I say a last farewell ? 
Can I leave you, 

Far in heathen lands to dwell ?" 

"What then must have been the tone of 
his mind, and the force of divine grace in 
his heart, who could turn his back on 
every charm of home and country that 
could bind a son and a brother, and lure a 
a youth of exalted talent to walks of honor, 
wealth or power ; and bidding father and 
mother, and brother and sister, and friends 
and country, adieu for ever, could go forth 
to take his lot for life among an idolatrous 
people; to learn a language, and preach 



ILLUSTRATED IX JUBSOX. 



31 



the gospel, as an untried experiment, in the 
dark places of the earth, where none had 
prepared a way before him, and where the 
only things certain to him were privation 
and exposure ; privation of the comforts if 
not the necessaries of life, and exposure to 
the jealousy and hate of cruel, superstitious, 
and arbitrary heathen powers ? 

"What that tone of mind, and that mea- 
sure of grace were, may, in some measure, 
be judged of by the letter, the answer to 
which was to settle for him the question 
whether the friend of his heart should 
share his fortunes ; or whether he must go 
alone. 

"I have to ask," said he, to the father of 
her who possessed his affections, " whether 
you can consent to part with your daughter, 
to see her no more in this world ? whether 
you can consent to her departure for a 
heathen land, and her subjection to the 
hardships and sufferings of a missionaiy 
life : whether you can consent to her ex- 
posure to the dangers of the ocean ; to the 
fatal influence of the climate of Southern 
India ; to every kind of want and distress ; 



32 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



to degradation, insult, persecution, and per- 
haps a violent death. Can you consent to 
all this for the sake of Him who left his 
heavenly home and died for her and for 
you; for the sake of perishing immortal 
souls ; for the sake of Zion and the glory 
of God? Can you consent to all this in 
the hope of soon meeting your daughter in 
the world of glory, with a crown of right- 
eousness brightened by the acclamations of 
praise which shall resound to her Saviour 
from heathen saved through her means 
from eternal woe and despair?" 

But though we see him thus turning 
away from prospects so bright to those so 
dark, so revolting, and so terrific ; we do 
not take the full altitude of the moral hero- 
ism we are contemplating till we behold 
him, afar on the sea, daring to put to him- 
self a question, the answer to which might 
break every tie yet left unbroken. It was 
the question : Have I, in all the points of 
my message, the truth to carry ? am I right 
on the subject of my Saviour's command ? 
Do I understand the commission he has 
given me to the Gentiles: to "go and con- 



ILLUSTRATED IIST JUDSON. 



33 



vert* the nations, baptizing in the name of 
the Father and the Son and the Holy 
Spirit. " Have I, in being sprinkled in my 
unconscious infancy, submitted to it, my- 
self ; and are the commission which I have 
received from my Master, and that which I 
bear from my brethren, which commands 
me to baptize believers with their households, 
compatible with each other ? 

He knew that if, in the examination of 
this question, he should come to the con- 
viction that the views in which he had been 
educated were unsupported by divine au- 
thority, his renunciation of them would 
overwhelm a father's complacency with 
mortification, and a mother's heart with 
sorrow ; that it would carry disappointment 
and displeasure through the churches and 
the ministry of his native land with which 
he was connected ; and that it must shut 
him out from their support. And he knew 
that the churches whose sentiment and 
practice he might be compelled by his ex- 
amination to adopt, had no organization 
whatever at that time, in this country, to 

* Literal rendering. 



34 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



which, he could turn for the means of sub- 
sistence. 

It was, then, with him, the question of 
the absolute surrender of the last of every 
thing that a young heart in its love, and 
hope, and pride, and ambition, could che- 
rish or aspire after : it was the question of 
bringing the edge of truth against the only 
remaining cord that now held him, in his 
descent into a dark and frightful abyss. It 
was the question of utter abandonment to 
the doom of an exile and an outcast, to betake 
himself, for the very means of subsistence, 
to the charities of the heathen; and for 
sympathy and shelter, to a people whose 
tender mercies are cruel. 

But it was the question of the right un- 
derstanding of his Master's command, on 
which Christians were unhappily divided 
in the land to which he had bidden adieu ; 
he had professed to give up every thing for 
Christ, when he received from him the 
grace of his own Son, and he nobly re- 
solved that, whatever might become of him, 
he would not transplant error and division 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 35 



to another land, if Christ would bless his 
search for the truth. 

For four months, alone on the ocean, did 
he and that noble woman who shared his 
spirit as she shared his fortunes, pursue the 
study of the subject, with the Bible and 
with Psedobaptist treatises (for they had no 
other), till their minds were brought to the 
settled conviction that Psedobaptism, and 
the practice of sprinkling, had no founda- 
tion in the word of God. And when they 
had come to that conviction, they "con- 
ferred not with flesh and blood," but " arose 
and were baptized" and looked to Him, 
for whom they had left every thing earthly, 
to fulfil the promises which they felt they 
now might claim: "Lo, I am with you: 
be not dismayed, for I am thy God : I will 
strengthen thee ; yea, I will help thee ; yea, 
I will uphold thee with the right hand of 
my righteousness." 

May we not, then, without passing the 
bounds of propriety, direct the eyes of man- 
kind to him as an example of sacrifice and 
consecration, worthy of being "marked" as 
one who " so walked as he had the Apostle 



36 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



for a type?" And, may we not, without 
being deemed to have pursued our com- 
parison too far, quote the remainder of the 
Apostle's autobiography referred to, as ap- 
plicable to him ? " What things were gain 
to me those I counted loss for Christ : Yea, 
doubtless, and I count all things but loss for 
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ 
Jesus my Lord ; for whom I have suffered 
the loss of all things." 

Such, then, was the spirit and such the 
circumstances in which we find the young 
missionary taking his position as the pio- 
neer and founder of the American Bap- 
tist Missions in the Burman empire. This 
field was the field of his choice.* Its soil 
was yet virgin to the hand of Christian 
husbandry. It gave him scope for the am- 
bition of his Apostolic spirit : the ambition 

* " Mr. Judson, with his excellent lady, left Mauritius 
for Madras, in the expectation of proceeding thence to 
Penang, and of commencing there his missionary labors 
with reference to the Malays. Such, however, were the 
arrangements of the overruling providence of God, as 
rendered it necessary for them to proceed from Madras 
directly to Rangoon — the very point had in view on leaving the 
United States for the East !" —Latter Day Lumin. Feb. 1818. 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 37 

of "preaching the Gospel not where Christ 
was named, lest he should build upon 
another man's foundation. But, as it is 
written, To whom he was not spoken of, 
they shall see ; and they that have not 
heard shall understand." There had, in- 
deed, been an attempt made to introduce 
Christianity into Burmah; but no impres- 
sion. No less than five missionaries had 
entered the field before him ; but the his- 
tory of their endeavors was well calculated 
to discourage him. One of them died soon 
after his arrival; and none of the others 
continued long enough at his post to see a 
single convert embracing the Gospel. One 
left the station in a few months after reach- 
ing it ; another removed in the course of a 
year ; and two others, after a little longer 
stay, and after making some progress in the 
language, abandoned the field in like man- 
ner. But it was just the field for such a 
man as Judson. JSTo people in the East had 
a stronger claim on Christian sympathy. 
Idolatry and despotism were crushing hu- 
man nature into the dust. The govern- 
ment, rapacious and cruel to the last de- 
4 



38 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



gree, with absolute mastery over life and 
property, was holding millions in poverty 
and terror, in a country whose soil and cli- 
mate gave scope for every earthly blessing. 
And the religion, a fit handmaid to such 
a government, completed the desolation 
which tyranny began. Its picturesque val- 
leys and majestic mountains were filled 
with idols and idol temples ; and its fertile 
soil, instead of showing fields of wavy 
plenty, was covered with jungles, the ha- 
bitation of tigers. But the people, though 
thus depressed, and showing the marks of 
moral degradation which centuries of op- 
pression and idolatry had burned into them, 
showed also unmistakable traits of promise. 
Morally degraded, indeed, they were : in- 
hospitable and selfish, crafty and distrust- 
ful, impatient and irascible, deceitful and 
false, indolent and unenterprising ; as a 
nation whose rulers had been robbers from 
time immemorial must be, or perish. They 
were, naturally, a race far superior, in their 
intellectual character, to most of the nations 
of the East ; and contained the unequivocal 
elements of promise for becoming a nation 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOX. 



39 



worthy to be the possessors of one of the 
finest countries of the world, whenever they 
should come under the refining and elevat- 
ing power of the Gospel. 

Unlike the natives of hither India, they 
are characterized by an acute and inquiring 
mind, and lively imagination : and unlike 
them in another respect, they are not bound 
to their superstitions by the ties of caste. 

Such was the sphere which Judson chose 
in which to make a trial — a life-long trial — 
of missionary courage, zeal, and power. 
To the religious instruction, the moral ele- 
vation, and the social improvement of that 
people he consecrated his life. 

Others had been there and taken a sur- 
vey of the obstacles to be encountered, the 
sufferings to be endured, and the labors to 
be done, before a harvest could be hoped 
for, or even the seed be scattered upon the 
soil : and they had retired dismayed or dis- 
couraged to more comfortable or more 
hopeful fields.* 

" We feel more and more convinced that the Gospel 
must be introdnced into this country through many trials 
and difficulties, through much self-denial and earnest 



40 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



One of these difficulties was the want of 
the aids which were necessary in learning 

prayer. The strong prejudices of the Burmans, their 
foolish conceit of superiority over other nations, the 
wickedness of their lives, together with the plausibility 
of their own religious tenets, make a formidable appear- 
ance in the way of their receiving the strict requirements 
of the Gospel of Jesus. But all things are possible with 
God ; and he is our only hope and confidence. He cau 
make mountains become valleys, and dry places streams 
of water." 

Mrs. JudsorCs Journal for April 16, 1814. 

That it may not appear that the missionaries who had 
preceded Mr. Judson, were too censurably desponding 
and alarmed, their own account of the state of things 
should be heard. Mr. Chater, one of the last to leave 
the ground, reports that although a handsome sum had 
been subscribed by the European merchants residing in 
Rangoon at that time, for the building of a place of wor- 
ship, yet " so little inclination towards the things of God 
was evinced, even by the European inhabitants, though 
the chapel had been open for worship on three successive 
Sabbaths, not an individual residing in the place came 
near it." Soon afterwards the town was burned down, 
excepting a few huts and the houses of the two principal 
officers. Forty thousand houses, it was stated by a Bri- 
tish officer who was there at the time, and no less than 
two hundred and fifty lives were destroyed by the torches 
of incendiaries. Some time after this, Mr. Chater writes, 
" The country is completely torn to pieces, as the Mugs 
and Rachniurs have revolted, and cut off the Burman go- 



ILLUSTRATED IX JUDSOX. 



41 



the language. 2so such thing as a lexicon 
of that lan^uasre had ever been made. And 
there were no persons to be found ac- 
quainted with the English and the Bur- 
man, who could aid him in its study. This, 
of itself, would have been enough to quench 
the zeal of an ordinary man. 

The nature of the difficulty cannot be 
better described than in his own lan2Tia2;e : 
and the manner in which he applied him- 
self to overcome it, for himself and for 
all who should come after him, is illustra- 
tive of his love of labor, his patience, and his 
perseverance. 

"Without a dictionary, without a gram- 
mar, without even an interpreter, he sat 

vernment ; and the Burmans themselves are forming large 
parties under the different princes." To complete the 
picture of the field, Mr. Judson had before him, we may 
add the statement of Mr. Chater's associates respecting 
the administration of government. " The Maywoon's 
time is much taken up in giving orders for executions. 
Five or six, convicted of murder, have been crucified, 
and their bellies ripped up while alive ; and two women, 
who have committed murder, are doomed to be devoured 
by a tiger V Xo wonder that Mrs. Judson doubted if it 
would be found " practicable to live in such a place." 

4* 



42 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



down with, a Burman, and began by point- 
ing to objects, and asking for their names. 
From morning to night, and day after day, 
did he thus sit, catching the sounds of the 
Burman tongue ; linking them to the ob- 
jects to which they belonged; and extract- 
ing, as best he could, by a sort of divina- 
tion, the elements of the grammar of the 
language from which he was thus able to 
gather. 

When two years and a half had passed in 
this manner, we find him writing to a 
friend in this country, respecting his past 
success, and the prospect before him, as 
follows : — 

" I just now begin to see my way forward 
in this language, and hope that two or 
three years more will make it somewhat 
familiar; but I have met with difficulties 
that I had no idea of before I entered on 
the work. 

" For a European or American to ac- 
quire a living oriental language, root and 
branch, and make it his own, is quite a 
different thing from his acquiring a cog- 
nate language of the "West, or any of the 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOX. 



43 



dead languages, as they are studied in the 
schools. 

w One circumstance may serve to illus- 
trate this. I once had occasion to devote 
a few 'months to the study of the French. 
I have now been engaged above two years 
in the Burman. If I were to choose be- 
tween a Burman and a French book, to be 
examined in, without previous study, I 
should, without the least hesitation, choose 
the French. "When we take up a western 
language, the similarity in the characters, 
in very many terms, in many modes of ex- 
pression, and in the general structure of 
the sentences, its being in fair print, and 
the assistance of grammars, dictionaries, 
and instructors, render the work compara- 
tively easy. But when we take up a lan- 
guage spoken by a people on the other side 
of the earth, whose very thoughts run in 
channels diverse from ours, and whose 
modes of expression are consequently all 
new and uncouth ; when we find the letters 
and words all totally destitute of the least 
resemblance to any language we had ever 
met with ; and these words not fairly di- 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



vicled and distinguished, as in western 
writing, by breaks and points, and capitals, 
but run together in one continuous line, — 
a sentence or paragraph seeming to the 
eye but one long word ; when instead of 
clear characters on paper, we find only ob- 
scure scratches on dried palm leaves strung 
together, and called a book ; when we have 
no dictionary, and no interpreter to explain 
a single word ; and must get something of 
the language, before we can avail ourselves 
of the assistance of a native teacher; 

'Kic labor, hoc opus est.' 

6 This is toil, this is labor/ 

He persevered, however, in this toil, and 
in this labor, till he became the most per- 
fect master of the language in the empire. 
And the little vocabulary that began with 
the names of the articles of the rude and 
scanty furniture of his bamboo dwelling, 
became the germ of the first dictionary of 
the Burman tongue. 

As soon as he was able to make himself 
at all understood, he sought to turn his ac- 
quirements to the benefit of those around 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOX. 



45 



him. Like his great apostolic pattern at 
Athens, " his spirit was stirred within him 
when he saw a people wholly given to idola- 
try ;" and he longed to "preach unto them 
that they should turn from these vanities 
unto the living God." 

But this was not an easy thing to be 
done, even if he had possessed a complete 
command of the language. For, on the 
subjects of the existence and character of 
God, on man's accountability, and on the 
nature of an atonement, they were men 
without words with which to communicate 
their ideas. They were a people who had 
emphatically lost the religion of God, 
and whose highest conceptions had never 
reached the idea of eternal existence.* 

As soon as he felt himself at all able, 
however, he resolved to make the trial of 
imparting that knowledge. He composed 
a tract which, with the most masterly skill, 

* i 'They have not the least idea of a God who is 
eternal- — without beginning or end. All their deities 
have been through the several grades of creatures, from 
a fowl to a deity." 
Mrs. Judsoris Letter to her Sisters, dated Dec. 8. 1815. 



46 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



brevity, and clearness, laid open the great 
truths of the Christian religion. He trans- 
lated portions of the Scriptures, and circu- 
lated them. He prepared himself a shelter 
by the road-side, and sat and conversed with 
people as they vrould stop and listen to his 
broken but earnest utterances of strange 
things about a Being who "made heaven 
and earth, and the sea, and all things that 
are therein ; who, in times past, suffered 
all nations to walk in their own ways, but 
who, nevertheless, left not himself without 
witness, in that He did .good, and gave 
them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, 
filling their hearts with food and glad- 
ness." 

He thus won acquaintance and kind feel- 
ings, and improved in his knowledge of 
the language. And thus, also, he extended 
the knowledge of Christian truth. But 
vear after year rolled away without evidence 
of its saving power on a single Burman 
soul. 

The Christian public in this country be- 
gan to be impatient for results ; and many 
began to doubt the practicability of evan- 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 



47 



gelizing that people. , The churches of our 
own denomination, that had been aroused 
to concert for the support and the reinforce- 
ment of the mission, began to pause, and 
ask whether God's time had come for 
their conversion : and whole Associations 
were drawing back from the missionary 
enterprise, as a project of man which God 
had refused to sanction. 

One is reminded, as he looks back on 
those years of unproductive toil, of free 
but apparently bootless expenditure ; and 
on the wide-spread revolt from the mission- 
ary cause — sweeping, in some instances, 
whole States away from its support ; — one 
is reminded of those days of gathering 
gloom when the forlorn hope of a strug- 
gling nation lay on the western bank of the 
Delaware ; and when "Washington knelt 
amid the snow^s of a December night, and 
prayed to God that freedom's suffering 
little band might not lose the sympathy and 
the confidence of those in whose service 
they were bleeding. 

It was a trying time for Judson ; and a 



48 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



critical conjuncture for the religious pros- 
pects of Burmali. 

What were his feelings and purposes, 
may be seen in his letters of the time. In 
1816, he wrote as follows to Rev. Dr. 
Staughton : — 

"My views of the missionary object are, 
indeed, different from what they were, 
when I was first set on fire by Buchanan's 
i Star in the East,' six years ago. But it 
does not always happen that a closer ac- 
quaintance with an object diminishes our 
attachment and preference. We some- 
times discover beauties, as well as deformi- 
ties, which were overlooked on a superficial 
view ; when some attractions lose their 
force, others more permanent are exerted ; 
and when the glitter, in which novelty in- 
vested the object, has passed away, more 
substantial excellences have room to dis- 
close their influence: and so it has been 
with me, I hope, in regard to the work of 
missions.' ' 

Again, in a letter, dated August 3, 1816, 
to Rev. Luther Rice, who, it will be re- 
membered, was engaged in this country in 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOX. 



49 



raising the means of supporting the mis- 
sion ; Juclson holds the following language; 

" If any ask what success I meet with 
among the natives, tell them to look at 
Otaheite, where the English missionaries 
labored nearly twenty years, and, not meet- 
ing with the slightest success, began to be 
neglected by all the Christian world, and 
the very name of Otaheite was considered 
a shame to the cause of missions ; but now 
the blessing begins to come. Tell them to 
look at Bengal, also, where Dr. Thomas 
had been laboring seventeen years, that is, 
from 1783 to 1800, before the first convert, 
Krishna, was baptized. When a few con- 
verts are once made, things move on. But 
it requires a much longer time than I have 
been here, to make a first impression on a 
heathen people. If they ask again, what 
prospect of ultimate success is there ? As 
much as that there is an Almighty and 
faithful God, who will perform his pro- 
mises, and no more. If this does not satisfy 
them, beg them to let me stay and try it, 
and to let you come, and to give us our 
bread ; or, if they are unwilling to risk their 



50 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



bread on such, a forlorn hope as has nothing 
but the "Word or God to sustain it, beg of 
them, at least, not to prevent others from 
giving us bread ; and if we live some twenty 
or thirty years, they may hear from us again. 

" This," he adds, in reference to a rein- 
forcement of the mission, " is a most 
wretched filthy place. Missionaries must 
not calculate on the least comfort but what 
they find in one another, and their work. 
However, if a ship was lying in the river, 
ready to convey me to any part of the world 
I should choose, and that too, with the entire 
approbation of all my Christian friends, I 
would prefer dying to embarking. This is 
an immense field : and since the Serampore 
missionaries have left it, it is wholly thrown 
on the hands of the American Baptists. If 
we desert it, the blood of the Burmans will 
be required of us." 

Some months afterwards he wrote to the 
Rev. Dr. Baldwin: — 

" We know not the designs of God, in 
regard to this country ; but I cannot but 
have raised expectations. It is true, we 
may have to labor and wait many years be- 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 51 



fore the blessing comes. But we see what 
God is doing in other heathen lands, after 
trying the faith and sincerity of his ser- 
vants, some fifteen or twenty years. Look 
at Otaheite, Bengal, and Africa. And is 
Burmah to remain a solitary instance of the 
inefficacy of prayer, of the forgetfulness of 
a merciful and faithful God ? 

"Is it nothing, that an attempt is begun to 
be made; that in one instance, the lan- 
guage is considerably acquired ; that a tract 
is ready for publication, which is intelligi- 
ble and perspicuous, and will give the Bur- 
mans their first ideas of a Saviour and the 
way of salvation; that a press and types 
have now arrived, and a printer is on the 
way ; that a grammar is finished to facili- 
tate the studies of others, and a dictionary 
of the language is in a very forward state ; 
and that the way is now prepared, as soon 
as health permits, to proceed slowly in the 
translation of the K"ew Testament ? Is it 
nothing, that just at this time, the monarch 
of the country has taken a violent hate to 
the priests of his own religion, and is en- 
deavoring, with all his power, to extirpate 



52 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



the whole order; at the same time profess- 
ing to be an inquirer after the true religion ? 
Is all this to be set clown a mere cipher? 
It is true that we may desire much more. 
But let us use what we have, and God will 
give us more." 

I confess there is, to my apprehension, a 
moral heroism and sublimity about this 
calm repose, this unfaltering courage, this 
unshaken constancy of purpose in seeking 
the salvation of that perishing people, which 
merit the admiration of mankind. And if 
"Washington is loved and honored as a good 
and great man, for abiding faithful in that 
day when a nation's freedom trembled on 
the balance of his decisions ; shall the world 
regard with indifference the spectacle of a 
soldier of the cross not only pledging his 
fortune and his life, when youth impelled 
and hope allured, to a nation's rescue from 
the thrall of idolatry ; but still adhering to 
that pledge while life wears on, and is 
wearing out amidst privations which the 
patriot never knew, amidst sufierings and 
indignities the patriot never was called to 
bear ; and who, while hope, to all the civil- 



ILLUSTRATED IX JUD30X. 



53 



izecl world, seems but a syren that has 
lured Mm to Ms ruin ; and while affection's 
voice from home is calling for his relin- 
quishment of his enterprise, and his return 
to his native land ; still stands at his post, 
and pleads for leave to toil and suffer, and 
die for a people not his own. It cannot be. 
Philanthropy — the love of man — is a higher 
attribute than patriotism — the love of coun- 
try. And it requires a more exalted vir- 
tue, and a not less lofty order of talent, to 
take the path that Juclson chose, and to 
pursue it as he pursued it, than it requires 
to compass a nation's civil freedom. 

But my object is not to eulogize. I wish 
to give facts which may leave their own 
impression. 

~We have seen how the young missionary 
gave up the blessings of civilized society, 
gave up his country and kindred ; his re- 
ligious connections, and his means and 
prospects of support, that he might carry a 
pure gospel and a pure conscience to the 
heathen. And we have seen how he met 
difficulties ; braved dangers ; and perse- 
vered in the midst of discouragements. 
5* 



54 GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



Before we can render full justice to his 
character, however, we must take a more 
particular view of the trials to which his 
firmness was subjected. 

And, that we may have a clearer appre- 
hension of the strength of his love for Christ 
and for the heathen, and the strength of 
his faith in the promises of God with re- 
gard to their recovery from idolatry, and their 
evangelization ; and, also, a more vivid im- 
pression of the power of that firmness which 
held him to the purpose and the vows of 
his youth, for the thirty-eight years which 
he spent in missionary labors ; we will 
glance at the events (occurring between his 
arrival on heathen ground, and the final 
establishment of the mission), which were 
adapted to put these virtues of love, and 
faith, and firmness, to the proof. 

The first proof to which these virtues were 
put, after his arrival on heathen ground, 
was his banishment by the British East 
India Company. 

How many men would have taken that 
as a providential indication ; and felt them- 
selves at liberty to return home, if not en- 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOX. 



55 



joined by a higher than British power to do 
so ? How many an ordinary Christian 
would have considered the door to the 
heathen closed against him ; and gladly 
returned to live and labor in a Christian 
land ? Judson believed that, if it had be- 
come manifest that God had not work for 
him to do in one pagan locality, it was no 
evidence that He had none for him in some 
other. " When Paul had gone throughout 
Phrygia, and the region of Galatia, and 
was forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach 
the word in Asia, he went into Mysia ; and 
essayed to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit 
suffered him not." Instead, however, of his 
concluding that he was not in the path of 
duty, and toning about and going back 
to Jerusalem, or to his native Tarsus ; he 
passed on and came down to Troas, and 
was rewarded for his perseverance by a 
vision that beckoned him to the field his 
Master wished him to enter. 

So with Judson. Instead of returning 
home when the door was closed against him 
in Hindostan, he retired to the Isle of 
France to watch and wait for another to open. 



56 



GRACE AND AP05TLE5HIP 



The second test to which he was subjected 
was furnished in the sickness, the bereave- 
ment, and the destitution which befell him 
at the Isle of France. 

After reaching it through a tedious and 
a perilous voyage, his wife was so ill with 
long tossing on the ocean, and with the 
heat of a tropical climate, as to look on 
herself as near her end. Mrs. Xewell, who, 
with her husband, had preceded them, had 
closed her missionary life : and was sleep- 
ing in death on their arrival. And Mr. 
Rice, the only friend whose society he 
could now hope to have in his work, left 
him for America. " Brother Rice has just 
left us writes Mrs. Judson in her Journal. 
I 6 Mr. Judson and I are now entirely alone — 
not one remaining friend in this part of the 
world. The scenes through which we pass 
are calculated to remind us, that the world 
is not our home ; and that we are fast verg- 
ing towards the grave. Xo matter how 
soon we leave this world if we only live to 
God while we live. In that case, to die is 
gain. Yet ice are icilling, and even desirous 
to live for a few years, that we may serve God 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 



57 



among the heathen, and do something toivards 
extending a knowledge of the Saviour in this 
benighted world!" 

We are willing to live ! But where ? 
Where can we live, among the heathen, 
was now their all absorbing question. They 
decide upon a location among the Malays 
— a nation of pirates as well as heathens. 
And, as they have no other means of reach- 
ing them than that of risking themselves 
again within the power of the Christian 
East India Company to seek a conveyance, 
they sail for Madras. 

Here their faith and constancy find their 
third test. No conveyance is to be had to 
their desired destination. 

To escape the danger to which they were 
exposed from the Christian hands that were 
armed with civil and military power for the 
defence of Idolatry within the British pos- 
sessions in India, they hasten on board of 
the only vessel they can find, bound for a 
pagan port ; and that port is Rangoon. 

Here fell one ray of light. Burmah had 
been their first aim. They had been driven 
6ut of Bengal ; they found it impossible to 



58 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



reach Penang; they were obliged to fly 
from Madras; and Burniah, coveted, yet 
dreaded Burinah, alone is open to them. 
But it is " the very point had in view on 
leaving the United States for the East !" 

Before embarking, the following was 
dropped from the pen to which was then 
intrusted the record of passing emotions : 
" It is our present purpose to make Ban- 
goon our final residence, if we find it prac- 
ticable to live in such a place ; otherwise to 
go" — where? Would it not be time to 
give up their missionary enterprise in des- 
pair, if, after all, they could not find a rest- 
ing place in Burmali ? K"o ! is their reply. 
It is our purpose " to go to some one of the 
Malay islands. But I most sincerely hope 
that we shall be able to remain at Rangoon, 
among the Burmans, a people who have 
never heard the sound of the Gospel, or 
read in their own lano-ua^e of the love of 
Christ. Though our trials may be great, 
and our privations many and severe, yet the 
presence of Jesus can make us happy; and 
the consciousness that we have sacrificed 
all for his dear cause, and are endeavoring 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOX. 



59 



to labor for tlie salvation of immortal 
souls, will enable us to bear our privations 
with some degree of satisfaction and de- 
light. . . . Adieu to polished, refined, 
Christian society ! Our lot is not cast with 
you, but among pagans ; among barbarians 
whose tender mercies are cruel." 

With these emotions and expectations 
they repair on ship-board: no fellow la- 
borer, no fellow Christian ; no American, 
no European even, to share their fortunes 
save a solitary female servant. One solitary 
female servant stood as helper and friend be- 
tween them and utter loneliness. But such 
is the heart's yearnings for sympathy, in cir- 
cumstances like theirs, that even an humble 
domestic is a heart-treasure ; and the most 
cultivated and refined are glad to come 
down and sit at the same hearth-stone with 
the menial for the sake of society. And 
this poor female, who is all they have to 
talk with of their fatherland, and their 
only representative of the Christian world 
— the only living relic of civilization which 
they have to accompany them into the land 
of darkness towards which they are bend- 



60 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



ing their way, — is, as I have said, a real 
heart treasure* ; and they now look to her, 
and cling to her as to an only earthly friend. 

God of mystery ! what is that heavy fall 
on the deck? It is she ! — a lifeless corpse! 

Oh, Judson, turn thy footsteps! All 
things are against thee : a Christian govern- 
ment opposes thee ; the elements fight thee ; 
death withstands thee ; thy God is against 
thee! Oh, Judson, turn thy footsteps to 
the land of thy fathers. " Refined society' 1 
calls thee ; love beckons thee ; and useful- 
ness and plenty, and ease, and honor, await 
thee there. Haste thee to thy country, thy 
kindred and thy quiet home ! 

But these were the reasonings and plead- 
ings of flesh and sense. He reread his 
commission from his Master : he drank at 
the fountain of strength; looked out on the 
gloom that covered the nations; listened 
again to the wail that came up from their 
firesides, and from their temples ; and went 
forward ! 

"We shall not detain you with the recital of 
the trials which his constancy suffered on his 
way, in an old and crazy vessel, by the sight 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 



61 



of a wife languishing in sickness, with no 
physician, no female attendant, without any 
accommodations, and with scarcely the 
necessaries of life. JSTor will we ask you to 
pause to cod template the condition of that 
suffering wife on their arrival, as she is 
borne, for want of a better conveyance, on 
the shoulders of men from that vessel, in 
the midst of laughing and shouting pagans ; 
and set down in an open shed in a heathen 
city. These, and such as these, are " light 
afflictions" in the life of Judson, and he 
himself, without doubt, regarded them as 
but the natural incidents of missionary life, 
though we should deem them ever memor- 
able if they made part of our own. 

The next real trial to his faith which we 
shall name, and in which the providence of 
God seemed to be frowning on his enter- 
prise, was such a failure of Mrs. Judson's 
health as involved the necessity of her 
leaving the country ; and brought him to 
the alternative of leaving it with her, or 
remaining alone. And what a spectacle do 
we behold in that crisis of their undertak- 
ing — in that hour of struggling affections, 



62 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



and convictions of duty ! She, noble wo- 
man, refuses to accept the company of her 
husband; commits herself again to the 
ocean, sick and alone : and he, having com- 
mended her to the God who rules the wind 
and the waves, returns to his lonely bamboo 
dwelling, to resume the study of the lan- 
guage ; to pass his days and nights without 
one voice, or word, to cheer his solitude ; 
without one heart to bow with him in 
prayer; and with the painful probability 
that he should never, never look upon the 
face of that martyr woman of his soul again. 
And now he comes before us with the 
loss of his sight. By this providential visi- 
tation he is entirely interdicted from study. 
After all obstacles have been surmounted 
in reaching his wished for field of labor ; 
and after he has made good progress in 
the language; he finds himself arrested 
by disease, and laid aside, and useless 
there. 

And new what remains but to abandon 
the missionary cause ? Methinks I hear 
some unbeliever, or some heartless pro- 
fessor of religion say : "It was folly, it was 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOX. 



63 



madness, it was fighting against God, to 
persevere." 

Xot so did they think and feel. They 
believe still in the promises of God in be- 
half of the heathen. And, although events 
were adverse, they refused to despair. 
"Jfever for a moment," we hear them say- 
ing to their friends at home, " never for a 
moment has God left us to feel that our 
first views of the practicability of missions 
were visionary. To this day do we offer 
thanks to Him for having brought and con- 
tinued us here. To this day can we testi- 
fy that he is good ; that he is a faithful 
covenant-keeping God, who is worthy of 
the entire trust and confidence of all his 
creatures."* 

His wife had returned improved in health ; 
and it now became his turn to go in quest 
of that mercy, while she remained to watch 
with one other who had joined the mission, 
the little glimmering lamp which they had 
lighted amid the gloom of an empire. 

And now comes the fifth great test of 



* See the Memoir of Mrs. Ann H. Judson, page 138 . 



64 



GRACE AST) APOSTLESHIP 



constancy. He sailed for the north — for 
Chittagong — for an absence of three months. 
The vessel, after long and fruitless strug- 
gles against opposing winds, became un- 
manageable, and made for Hindostan, tak- 
ing him ocean-wide both from his mission 
home, and from the shore he sought ; and 
leaving him on the shore of Hindostan, at 
a point from which he had to travel no less 
than three hundred miles, by land, to reach 
a city from which he might hope to find a 
passage home ! 

There he was, nevertheless, obliged to 
linger through the slow moving months of 
almost half a year, before he was able to 
find the means of conveyance back to Kan- 
goon. And, after all this suffering and loss 
of time, and an agonizing uncertainty as to 
the fate of his wife, with the anguish of 
knowing that if she vet lived she must long 
since have given him up for lost ; — when he 
returned, he found that, such had been the 
terrors with which she had been surrounded 
by the oppressions of government, by the 
prevalence of that scourge of Asia — the 
cholera — and by the expectation of approach- 



i 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 65 

ing war; that his only missionary helper 
had fled to Bengal ; and left his wife, heroic 
woman, to confront the perils which were 
pressing for the extinction of the mission, 
and to breast the shock alone ! 

The fifth woe is past ; and what shall the 
sixth be ? Shall we enumerate the death 
of both the missionaries who had come to 
his aid ? Or was it the clond of ill portent 
that settled down on his prospects when, 
on his application to the emperor for pro- 
tection, that " lord of life and death" after 
having received from him the frank state- 
ment of his object in coming to Burmah, 
and the honest though perilous avowal of 
the beginnings of success in the work of 
conversion, dashed to the ground the 
splendid volumes of the Bible that he had 
presented; and dismissed him from his 
presence ? 

Of the effect of this repulse, and disap- 
pointment in a measure on which he had 
staked all his labors and sufferings for so 
many years — a measure by which he had 
drawn the eye of sovereign, absolute, pagan 
power on him ; and had brought down its 
6* 



I 

66 GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 

frown instead of its protection, — I cannot 
deny you the benefit of his own recital. 
He had been accompanied to the " golden 
city" by two of the three disciples with 
whose conversion his seven years' toil and 
sufferings had been rewarded. And they 
had waited at the door of the palace for 
what was to be, to them, the sentence of 
life or death. 

kfc It was now evening. We had four 
miles to walk by moonlight. Two of our 
disciples only followed us. They had 
pressed as near as they ventured to the 
door of the hall of audience, and listened 
to words which sealed the extinction of 
their hopes and ours. For some time we 
spoke not. 

" Some natural tears we dropt, but wiped them soon; 
The world was all before us, where to choose 
Our place of rest, and Providence our guide." 

" And, as our first parents took their soli- 
tary way, through Eden, hand in hand, so we 
took our way, through this great city, which, 
to our late imagination, seemed another 
Eden ; but now, through the magic touch 
of disappointment, seemed blasted and 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 



67 



withered, as if smitten by the fatal influ- 
ence of the cherubic sword. 

"Arrived at the boat,* we threw our- 
selves down, completely exhausted in body 
and mind. For three days we had walked 
eight miles a day, the most of the way in 
the heat of the sun, which, even at this sea- 
son, in the interior of these countries, is 
exceedingly oppressive : and the result of 
our travels and toils has been — the wisest 
and best possible — a result, which, if we 
could see the end from the beginning, 
would call forth our highest praise. slow 
of heart to believe and trust in the constant 
presence and over-ruling agency of our own 
Almighty Saviour!" 

I will not stop here to dwell with you on 
the strength and sublimity of that faith 
which could thus behold all its cherished 
schemes and bright hopes swept as with 
the blast of a sirocco, and yet maintain its 
serenity. 

But I must hasten to the last and the 

* Their only place of rest and shelter was the craft in 
which they had made their journey up the river; a boat 
six feet wide and forty feet long, rowed by ten men. 



68 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



greatest of those afflictions by which it 
pleased God to test his love for the heathen ; 
and to fit him for that career of service which 
has won for him a name that can never die. 
I allude to the sufferings he passed through 
during the British and Barman war. 

It is a fearful mystery that a God of in- 
finite wisdom and goodness has, in all ages, 
called his holiest and most devoted servants 
to pass through the severest trials. But it 
is most certainly a part of his plan for con- 
ferring the blessings of his grace on the 
world. The Apostles, one and all, are ex- 
amples of this. And, indeed, the Saviour 
himself had no exemption from this fearful 
law : for " it became him for whom are all 
things, and by whom are all things, in 
bringing many sons unto glory, to make the 
Captain of their salvation perfect through 
sufferings/ ' 

Those which our missionary endured for 
a period of nineteen months in the prisons 
of Burmah, from the hands of men, from 
the climate, from want, from sickness, from 
tortures inflicted, and from the heart-har- 
rowing spectacle he had before him in the 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOX. 



69 



condition of his devoted wife, belong to the 
darkest pages of Christian martyr history. 

Conceive, if yon can, of the condition of 
being seized without a moment's warning 
by a band of men execnting the order of 
an absolute pagan despot, amid the fiendish 
shouts of an enraged heathen populace, 
thrown rudely to the earth, bound with cords 
so tight as to prevent respiration, dragged 
away from a beloved wife, who must be 
left exposed to insult, and extortion, and 
pillage, if not to violence and murder, and 
agonizing with fear for the fate of her hus- 
band. 

Follow him into the death-prison where, 
under three pairs of iron fetters, and 
fastened to a pole with others, he is thrown 
upon the ground. Witness the brutal 
jailers driving his wife from the door of 
the prison ; and denying her all communi- 
cation with him, except as purchased by 
submitting to extortions which were taking 
what little the robberies of the government 
had left between her and starvation. 

Sometimes they forbid him the poor re- 
lief of exchanging words of condolence with 



70 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



his fellow sufferers around him ; sometimes 
they forbid him food; sometimes they 
turn the precious boon of a brief interview 
with his wife into a cup of bitterness by 
delaying her admittance to an hour which 
must compel her to risk her life by a two 
miles' walk through an unlighted and hos- 
tile city, in the darkness of night, to her 
lonely and unprotected home : and this 
too, when she was in a situation the most 
affecting to a husband's heart. And when 
the hour has come whose anguish is wo- 
man's exclusive heritage, he, instead of 
being near to succor her, is ordered for 
execution; and is only saved from the 
block or the stake by a commutation which 
consigns him to an inner prison, bound 
with five pairs of fetters, amid a hundred 
other sufferers, in a single room which has 
no ventilation except the crevices in the 
walls ; and this, at the beginning of the 
hottest season of the year. 

A fever follows, and he is only saved from 
a release by death, and strengthened for 
further sufferings, by a removal into better 
air. 



ILLUSTRATED IN JLDSOX. 



71 



While languishing in this condition, a 
new officer comes into power, and he is 
ordered to be offered up as a burnt sacrifice 
to the god of war. He is stripped of his 
clothing; bound to another victim; and 
driven, without covering to head or feet, 
beneath a blazing sky, at mid-day, with a 
nearly vertical sun, over a road of gravel 
and sand, which are like burning coals, and' 
which completely excoriate his feet before 
he has gone a single mile of the ei^ht to be 
traveled. Thus he goes, marking his path 
with his blood, and goaded by his driver 
to keep pace with the horse of an officer, 
to another and distant prison. The death 
of one of his fellow-prisoners from his suf- 
ferings by the way, saves him from that 
coveted relief by consigning him to an ox 
cart to finish the journey. 

Here, in an old and dilapidated prison, he 
languishes for six months more; having 
been spared the death by fire, to which he 
had been doomed, by the downfall of the 
monster who had ordered the sacrifice. 
Hither he is followed bv that ministering 
angel without whose succor in his present 



72 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



condition he must inevitably and speedily 
have died. She seeks him food; she 
dresses his wounds ; and, by submission to 
privation and extortion, she sometimes ob- 
tains for him some small degree of personal 
liberty, through appeals to cupidity, where 
appeals to humanity were vain. 

Before, however, he has so far recovered 
as to be able to walk, he sees her sinking 
under the pressure of her long continued 
anxiety and fatigue ; and, instead of being 
able to continue her much needed minis- 
tries of mercy to him, needing such minis- 
tries much more herself. 

And what must have been the agony of 
that grateful and tender-hearted husband, 
as he beheld her falling a martyr of her de- 
votion to him ; and had neither the liberty, 
nor the strength, nor the means, for allevi- 
ating her sufferings ? 

The heart absolutely sickens at the spec- 
tacle of the sorrows with which it pleased 
an inscrutable Providence to prepare this 
servant of Jesus for the work and the joy 
that were before him. And were we not 
able, as we now are, to look back through 



ILLUSTRATED IX JUDSOff. 



the cloud which then " veiled and darkened 
his designs," and to see the joy that was 
before him in the success of the mission ; 
and to see, as we now can see, in his Chris- 
tian and literary labors, the sure presage of 
the civilization of an empire ; we fear that 
our confidence in a special Providence would 
fail us, even as spectators. 

As it is, we feel the necessity of betaking 
ourselves for reassurance to those Scrip- 
tures which tell us that afflictions are not 
accidental ; which point us even to a harm- 
less and holy Saviour " put to grief;" and 
to the apostle's rejoicing (Col. i. 24,) in his 
own sufferings, and filling up that which is 
behind of the afflictions of Christ in his own 
flesh, for his body's sake, which is his church, 
and exhorting us to " think not strange 
concerning the fiery trials," but to " con- 
tinue in the faith," while " through much tri- 
bulation we enter into the kingdom of God." 

But what must have been the measure 
of that grace, what the strength of that faith 
in God, what the patience of hope in our 
Lord Jesus Christ, what that taking hold 
of the things which are eternal, — I speak 



74 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



to yon, husbands and fathers — which could 
stand the trial of seeing a wife, and such a 
wife, after eleven long months of toil and 
exposure and anxiety for him, and that, 
too, in a situation which we, in our homes 
of comfort find calling forth our tenderest 
sympathy : — after having a hundred times 
periled her life to save him from famine ; 
and more than once stayed the axe of the 
executioner by rushing with pleadings and 
remonstrance into the presence of despotic 
power; and after having now followed him, 
borne on a rude ox-cart, in her maternal 
weakness, through a tropic sun, to soothe, 
if she might do no more — to soothe his 
dying hour ; — the trial, I say, of seeing such 
a wife obliged to accept as a charity from 
the hand of a heathen jailer, a store-room 
in a wretched hovel for a home, without a 
solitary article of convenience : without so 
much as a bed of straw to rest on, without 
a chair or seat of any kind other than a 
bamboo floor. And this for six long 
months hers, and her infant's only home \ 

And. then, to see her sinking under the 
power of a disease which has been generated 



ILLUSTRATED IX JUDSOX. 



75 



by exposure and privation, and unable to 
procure medical attendance or medicines: 
and, though, so weak as hardly to be able 
to walk, obliged to wend her way back ten 
miles to their deserted residence at the 
capital for means of relief ; and returning 
so emaciated that even the natives, who 
had been the objects of her kindness, burst 
into tears as they lift her out of the rude 
cart that has borne her back, and lay her 
on the little mat of her bamboo floor. And 
then to see that infant — the only remem- 
brancer and image of that wife that will be 
left to him — famishing and pleading with 
its moans for sustenance ; and to be able to 
save it from absolute starvation only by ob- 
taining leave, through presents to his jailers, 
to come out of prison, and, in his fetters, 
to take the little emaciated sufferer around 
the village to beg the means of life from 
heathen mothers' breasts ! 

Thus was this servant of God, to all ap- 
pearance, on the verge of realizing the utter 
extinction of all his hopes for Burmah ; the 
utter loss of all earthly comforts for him- 
self; and the termination of his own life 



76 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



by long continued cruelties, if not by the 
hand of the executioner, or by sacrificial 
fire. 

But that God in whom he had put his 
trust supported him to a degree that was 
almost miraculous ; and gave him the oc- 
casion to say, in the language of his great 
precursor, (had his modesty allowed him 
the comparison,) to his anxious brethren at 
home, from whose view he had been hid- 
den for almost two years : " We would not, 
brethren, have you ignorant of our troubles 
which came to us in Asia, that we were 
pressed out of measure, above strength, in- 
somuch that we despaired even of life. But 
we had the sentence of death in ourselves, 
that we should not trust in ourselves, but 
in God which raiseth the dead!" 

His own deliverance from the grasp of 
the power which had consigned him a 
sacrifice to a heathen altar, was a most 
marked interposition of that Omnipotent 
Life-Restorer ; and the recovery of his 
loved ones was scarcely less than a resur- 
rection. 

I have mentioned his modesty — a trait 



ILLUSTRATED . IN JUDSOX. 



77 



always conspicuous in all lie did and said — 
and it is pertinent to this place to give the 
few brief lines which comprise his own ac- 
count of these long months of accumulat- 
ing sufferings, as one illustration of that 
Christian grace. 

In his letter to the Corresponding Secre- 
tary of the Board of Missions, written soon 
after his escape, he says : " Through the 
kind interposition of our Heavenly Father, 
our lives have been preserved, in the most 
imminent danger from the hand of the exe- 
cutioner ; and in repeated instances of most 
alarming illness, during my protracted im- 
prisonment of one year and seven months ; 
nine months in three pairs of fetters, two 
months in five, six months in one, and two 
months a prisoner at large. On the joyful 
21st of February last, I took leave, with 
Mrs. Judson and family, of the scenes 
of our sufferings — sufferings which, it would 
seem, have been unavailing to answer any 
valuable missionary purpose, unless so far 
as they may have been silently blessed to 
our spiritual improvement, and capacity for 
future usefulness. Let me beg your prayers 
7* 



78 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



that it may not be in vain that we have 
been afflicted/' Afflicted! Is that all he 
has to say of it? 

But who would not, on any natural prin- 
ciples have said, "I have endured enough 
in this missionary enterprise in behalf of 
this people." "What human heart, in its 
mere natural workings, would not have 
said, " Turn from them, and leave them to 
their fate I" Go home ! take yourself — 
take these sufferers — your angelic wife, and 
your cherub child — and hasten to the bosom 
of your own country and friends : and, if 
you must preach the gospel, preach it there. 
The church will justify you ; and the world 
will praise you for having some thought, 
at the least, for yourself." 

But what were his feelings? He had 
scarcely escaped from his prison — he had 
scarcely looked out upon life — before we 
find him looking after his scattered dis- 
ciples ; and beginning, in a manner, the 
world over again, by recommencing his 
labors on a spot where the arm of tyranny 
might not reach him. 

" It was this consideration chiefly," says 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOtf. 



79 



he — and who will not approve his motive for 
quitting the presence of the throne, though 
it is now wooing his stay ; and who can 
foil to appreciate the feeling evinced in his 
utterance as he sat down, for the first time 
after his release, to write to his distant 
friends ; and looking up, saw the British 
flag waving over him ; and dated his letter, 
" British Camp!''' — " It was this considera- 
tion (of the cession of territory to the Brit- 
ish by the treaty) chiefly, that induced me 
to embrace the first opportunity of leaving 
Ava ; where the only object I ever had in 
settling was, to obtain some toleration for 
the Christian religion, — a favor which I hope 
note to enjoy without leave from his golden 
footed majesty."* 

What elasticity — to use no stronger 
term — what integrity of spirit have we 
here, after such long continued and crush- 
ing pressure ! What horrors of the rack 
would be sufficient to break that spirit 
which such horrors as we have seen were 

* Letter to Dr. Baldwin, written four days after his 
release. 



80 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



unable to subdue ? But perhaps they have 
subdued him, at least so far as to make 
him willing to accept exemption from the 
crosses of the missionary service, if he may 
do so without utter sacrifice of his useful- 
ness in it. Perhaps, if he is not ready to 
quit it in disgust or in despair, he has 
learned, in his severe privations, at least to 
value more highly the things which men 
so generally prize. Privation makes earthly 
comforts sweet. And if he may not feel 
at liberty to go home to enjoy them, he 
may at least deem himself excusable if he 
accept an easier seat, a softer pillow, a more 
generous table, an ampler repose, when 
placed within his reach. 

The man who had life enough left in 
him, after feeling the crushing heel of des- 
potism as he had felt it, to rise and ac- 
knowledge his obligation with such a vale- 
dictory as we have quoted, certainly had 
life enough left to respond to the touch and 
charm of fortune. 

If evidence were needed that we scan 
human nature rightly, it could be drawn 
from incidents very near him. The last of 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 



81 



those who had made the attempt before 
him to establish a mission in Burmah, 
after the trial to which it pleased God to 
subject him, melted away before the sun- 
shine of royal favor ; and was seen on the 
mission field no more. And one of his 
own " fellow prisoners, of note among the 
apostles, and whose bonds in Christ were mani- 
fest in all the palace" accepted a refuge 
from further hardships : content to do 
what he might in the service of the King 
of kings, compatible with the easy service 
of a royal heathen master. 

But how was it with Judson ? At the 
close of the negotiations between the con- 
tending powers, in which he had been com- 
pelled to spend some months as interpre- 
ter, he found himself in the possession of 
some thousands of dollars, as the reward 
of his services, and as expressions of per- 
sonal regard. What does he do with it ? 

In a letter written after he had taken a 
survey of the wild spot selected as the future 
capital of the newly ceded territory, and 
where he was to fix his future home, he 
says, " the expense of building such mat 



82 



GRACE AXD APOSTLESHIP 



houses as our present necessities require is 
not large : we have expended about three 
hundred dollars, and have sufficient accom- 
modation for myself and Brother "Wade's 
family, besides a commodious place for the 
female school. Since the close of the war 
I have been able, from money paid me by 
the British government as interpreter, pre- 
sents lately made me at Ava, and donations 
to the mission, to pay into," — to give would 
have been the proper term — " to pay into 
the fund of the Board above four thousand 
dollars." 

And this, to make the execution of the 
purpose sure, he transmitted to the agent 
of the Board at Calcutta. 

But not only has he the means of im- 
proving his condition in hand ; but he has, 
before him, the temptation of a position 
which will insure him ease, and wealth, 
and honor, for the remainder of his days. 

The British authorities offered him the 
post of its stated interpreter, with a salary 
of three thousand dollars a year. But he 
saw that it would interfere with his mis- 
sionary labors, and he passed it by. And 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 



83 



lie did so with so little of struggle or hesi- 
tation, that he seems not to have thought 
the offer and refusal worth recording. He 
panted to be at his Master's business ; and 
was ambitious only of "the honor that 
cometh from God." 

As soon as the first engrossing thought 
and joy at his safety could be expected to 
make room for any thoughts of the future, 
we hear him expressing an almost impatient 
desire to be at his work, with so faint a re- 
ference to the temptation before him to an 
easier path of life, that the world could not 
have known from it that the lure had fallen 
in his way. 

" I long," says he, in the letter already 
quoted, "I long for the time when we shall 
be able to re-erect the standard of the Gos- 
pel, and enjoy once more the stated wor- 
ship of the Lord's house. I feel a strong 
desire henceforth to know nothing; anions 
this people but Jesus Christ and him cruci- 
fied; and, under an abiding sense of the 
comparative worthlessness of all worldly 
things, to avoid every secular occupation, 
and all literary and scientific pursuits, and 



84 



GRACE AND AP05TLE5HIP 



devote the remainder of my days to the 
simple declaration of the all-precious truths 
of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ." 

But we need not follow his steps any 
further for illustration of his character. We 
have seen him in almost all possible con- 
ditions of trial : in prosperity, and adversity ; 
in dangers, and in temptations. "We have 
seen the precious metal in the crucible ; we 
have watched the long and painful process 
by which the great Eefiner was fitting it 
for " a chosen vessel unto Himself to bear his 
name before the Gentiles" It has stood the 
fire : the fire of a seven times heated fur- 
nace : and has come forth seven times puri- 
fied gold. 

He has passed the examination, by his 
Master, of a candidate for the high honor 
of a pioneer apostle in his revived commis- 
sion for the evangelization of the world. 
He has been subjected to that severe test. 
" He that loveth father or mother more than 
me is not worthy of me ; and he that lov- 
eth son or daughter more than me is not 
worthy of me ;" and, " whosoever he be of 
you that forsaJeeth not all that he hath, he 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSOX. 



85 



cannot be my disciple." And lie has stood 
it : " approving himself as a minister of 
God in much patience, in afflictions, in ne- 
cessities, in distresses, in stripes, in im- 
prisonments, in tumults, in labors, in patch- 
ings, in fastings, by pureness, by know- 
ledge, by long-suffering." And, in most 
wonderful coincidence with the experience 
of his great apostolic exemplar, he could 
say : " In stripes above measure ; in prisons 
more frequent; in deaths oft; in journey- 
ings often ; in perils of waters, in perils of 
robbers, in perils by the heathen, in perils 
in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in 
perils in the sea, in perils among false 
brethren." 

He was called to other sufferings indeed, 
than these through which we have followed 
him; but they were "such as is common 
to man." The wife who had shared with 
him the sacrifice, the dangers, the priva- 
tions, the labors, by which it pleased God 
to prepare him for the part he was to act 
in the regeneration of Burmah, was taken 
from him before he had fairly entered on 
his work at Amherst ; and his lovelv infant 
8 



86 



GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP 



daughter — the only one then remaining to 
bear the image of that matchless woman — 
was taken soon afterwards. And when, 
after eight years of loneliness, he married 
again, it was his lot to drink once more of 
the bitter cup of affliction, in the loss of a 
second wife ; who, like the first, was, both 
in her relation to him and to the mission, 
a priceless treasure. 

But these trials came in that order of 
events which embraces the lot, and controls 
the happiness of all: and they found no 
grace in him, which trials can reach, that 
had not been already developed and ma- 
tured. 

He took his new position and began 
his work therefore, as a man whose heart 
had been fully prepared for it, if not 
" thoroughly refined" by sufferings. And 
he labored at the three great departments 
of Christian industry to which he had con- 
secrated his life — the religious instruction 
of the perishing heathen ; the translation 
of the Bible into the Burman tongue ; and 
the collection and definition of the words 
of that language, in the first dictionary 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUDSON. 87 



which the language had known, from the 
beginning of 1827, to the close of his life : 
a period of twenty-three years : making, 
with the preparatory period of trial which 
we have had under special consideration, 
more than thirty-eight years devoted to 
missionary service. He lived to see a large 
reward for all he had suffered, in the mul- 
tiplication of converts, and the establish- 
ment of churches ; in the complete transla- 
tion of the word of God ; and in the near 
completion of one of the fullest and most 
perfect lexicons possessed by the people of 
any living tongue. He lived to see the 
mission expand from one district, and from 
one country to another ; until it had spread, 
in Asia, from Burmah to Siam, to China, 
and to Southern India: until it had em- 
braced 15 stations, 88 outstations, 89 mis- 
sionaries and assistants, 128 native preach- 
ers, 88 schools, instructing nearly 2,000 
youth ; upwards of 8,000 native converts ; 
and an issue of more than five millio?is of 
pages from the various mission presses in 
a single year ! 
In the view we have taken we have seen, 



88 



GRACE AST) AP05ILE5HIP 



in Adoniram Jndson, the following graces 
of apostleship exhibited in circumstances 
of trial unsurpassed by those by which it 
pleased God to put the graces of the eon- 
vert of Tarsus to the proof. We have seen 
a supremacy of love to Christ that never 
hesitated or wavered under the test of any 
suffering or privation. We have seen a 
crucifixion to the world, which rendered 
utterly powerless the charm of honors and 
wealth. We have seen a faith in the pro- 
mises of God, with reference to the conver- 
sion of the heathen, which nothing could 
shake. We have seen a perseverance which 
no obstacles could vanquish. "We have seen 
a spirit of enterprise adequate to the most 
gigantic undertaking. We have seen a 
love of labor which the most disabling sick- 
ness could not subdue. We have seen a 
courage which no danger could daunt. We 
have seen an integrity which could put 
everything to hazard rather than the truth. 
And with all this we have seen a compas- 
sion for the souls of the heathen, which no 
cruelties could benumb ; and a modesty in 
his estimate of what he did and suffered, 



ILLUSTRATED IN JUD30N. 



89 



which, hardly seemed to regard it as a mat- 
ter for official report or recital. 

We have seen, in short, a Christian of 
modern times emulating a primitive apos- 
tle, through a path of like tests of fidelity 
and in the discharge of kindred duties. 
It only remains for us to call on the minis- 
try, on the churches, and on the world of 
the age to which he belonged, to " mark 
him," and profit by his example. 



8* 



THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

CONTEMPLATED 

AS A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT 

IN 

MISSIONARY LABORS. 

AN ADDRESS. 

BY REV. ROBERT W. GUSH MAN. 



ADDRESS.* 



Christianity was designed for the world. 
Its founder came a light to the Gentiles, as 
well as to he the glory of Israel. Although, 
as to his personal ministry, he was not sent 
but unto the lost sheep of the house of 
Israel, his commission to his disciples, when 
he had made reconciliation for iniquity, 
and brought in everlasting righteousness, 

* This article was delivered as an address before the 
Society for Missionary Inquiry in the Hamilton Literary 
and Theological Institution, August 18, 1840. As the 
present is an important crisis in our missionary opera- 
tions, and as it is to be feared that a just sense is not 
entertained of the necessity of vigorous and united efforts 
to sustain the missionary enterprise, no apology -will be 
needed for publishing the address in its present form. 
It has been solicited from the author, and is now given 
to the public, in the hope that its peculiar character and 
mode of treatment will render it serviceable to the cause 
of missions at the present juncture. — Editor of the Chris- 
tian Review, 1841. 

(93) 



94 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEX 

imposed the obligation to carry the glad 
tidings to the whole human race. 

It is not among the least satisfactory of 
the evidences of the divine inspiration of 
the Scriptures, that they harmonize with 
the real wants of mankind, and are fraught 
with blessings for every nation, age and 
clime ; and that, too, while the proof is 
everywhere scattered over their pages, that 
the people through whom they were given 
were under the dominion of a spirit of Pha- 
risaism, which would fain have confined 
the knowledge of Jehovah to themselves, 
or, at most, would have extended it to those 
only, of other nations, who should be will- 
ing to sue for it at the outer court of their 
temple. Yet the spirit of the Bible is ex- 
pansive as the light, and comprehensive as 
the nature of man. Although the posterity 
of Abraham were marked for a distinct and 
peculiar people, it is every where seen that 
they were under the government of him 
who was " not the God of the Jews only, 
but the God of the Gentiles also ;" while 
the whole current of the divine disclosures 
reflects the wants and the coming blessings 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 95 



of a world. " The Lord looketh from hea- 
ven ; he beholdeth all the sons of men. 
From the place of his habitation he looketh 
upon all the inhabitants of the earth. He 
fashioneth their hearts alike ; he considereth 
all their works." And, while he chooses 
the family of Abraham for his own peculiar 
inheritance, he determines that "in him all 
the families of the earth shall be blessed." 

The spirit of revelation is thus essentially 
a spirit of missions. And it is a thought 
full of refreshing and hope, when we mourn 
over the ruins of the fall ; when the heart 
sickens at the 

" every day's report 
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled ;" 

when the plaint of suffering humanity in 
remotest nations thrills our sensibilities; 
when the moral wants of those from whom 
we are distanced by half the circumference 
of the globe, excite our compassion, — that 
the spirit within us is so kindred with that 
by which the prophets were inspired ; that 
the fire which we feel shut up in our bones, 
is the same heaven-descended element that 



96 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

kindled in the sacrifices of patriarchal de- 
votion ; illumined and warmed the true 
worshipers of the temple ; shone forth in 
the Mediator of the new covenant, on " the 
land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephtha- 
lim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, 
Galilee of the Gentiles;" and that, in giv- 
ing vent to it in missionaiy enterprise, we 
are but carrying out the merciful purpose 
of him who is " the God of the spirits of all 
flesh." 

Assuredly, the spirit which is thus har- 
monious with that of him "who so loved 
the world that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in him might 
not perish," has not been kindled to shed 
a flickering, futile light, and then expire. 
It prompts the prayer, " Thy kingdom 
come ; thy will be done on earth as it is in 
heaven." It rouses those whom it warms, 
to aspire to be co-workers with God him- 
self, in putting an end to sin ; and, as the 
word he has given shall not return to him 
void, so, neither shall the efforts of the 
company that publish it be in vain. 

Not only is there encouragement, how- 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 



93 



ever, for missionary endeavor, in the fact 
of a coincidence of the missionary spirit 
with the spirit of the Bible, and the de- 
clared purposes of God with respect to the 
moral renovation of the world, but also in 
the fact of the natural fitness of the means 
furnished for effecting that renovation. 

It is true, indeed, that when we contem- 
plate the difficulties that lie before us in 
any undertaking, it should be sufficient en- 
couragement to know it is the will of God 
it should be done. It should be sufficient, 
in our weakness, to know that u to them 
that have no might he increaseth strength;'' 
that whatever he has commanded can be and 
will be accomplished; that, though " all flesh 
is grass, and all the goodliness of man as the 
flower of the field, yet the word of the Lord 
shall stand for ever ;" and, therefore, " every 
valley shall be exalted, and every mountain 
and hill shall be made low; and the crooked 
shall be made straight, and the rough 
places plain : and the glory of the Lord 
shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it 
together;" and that, as to natural fitness 
of the means, we ought not to despond, if, 



98 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MAST 



in obedience to his command, we were en- 
tering the church-yard, to preach the gos- 
pel to the tenants of the grave, and to bid 
the dry bones live. 

But it may well acid, nevertheless, and 
greatly add to our encouragement, to dis- 
cover, amid the apparent impossibilities of 
our enterprise, some ground for expecta- 
tion in the natural adaptations and fitness 
of things ; to discover, — while we are con- 
templating the magnitude of the work, — 
while we are looking on the world we are 
required to raise, — that God has not only 
promised supernatural power to our arm, 
but has given us the lever and the fulcrum 
that are measured to its magnitude; and 
the footing — the Ao$ rtov otu* — on which to 
stand. We have not only a world of fallen 
men to raise from the confines of perdition 
to the neighborhood of heaven, by means 
of the gospel, but we have a basis in the 
nature of man for the application of its 
power. 

* Ao$ rtov tfi'w xai tov xotifiov xivyaco. Give me 
where I may stand, and I will move the world. — Archi- 
medes. 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 99 

Two things obviously claim the study of 
those who would bear an efficient part in 
bringing the world to the obedience of the 
faith : they must have an understanding of 
the instrument, and of the object on which 
it is to act ; a knowledge of the gospel, and 
a knowledge of man. To the office of im- 
parting the former, our Theological Semi- 
naries are specially consecrated ; but the 
means of obtaining the latter are seldom 
adequately in the student's power. Devo- 
ting himself, while young, to his studies, 
and mingling but seldom with any except 
those of similar age, pursuits and spirit, he 
sees and hears but little of the nature to 
which he belongs, and on which he is to 
operate, till he is ushered forth into the 
field of his toil. I cannot, therefore, but 
regard the existence of a Society among 
those who are preparing, some for the do- 
mestic and some for the foreign work of 
the ministry, the object of which is to pro- 
secute inquiry into the facilities and the 
difficulties which are before them, as most 
auspicious of success; and I meet, with 
peculiar pleasure, the members of this Insti- 



100 THE MORAL LIKEXESS OF MAN 

tution this evening, in the capacity of a band 
of missionary inquirers. I would join your 
company. I would ascend with you some 
eminence, from which we may, together, 
survey the world ; and, while we contem- 
plate the almost endless variety of mental 
character, social habits, and civil and re- 
ligious institutions, which seem to bid de- 
fiance to the simple instrument which we 
are directed to employ, I would point your 
attention to a common characteristic, the 
same through every age and clime, as an 
excitement to hope and exertion. 

Diversified, indeed, is the aspect of the 
human family; so diversified, that not a 
few have been led to doubt the common 
origin of the races of which it is composed. 
In color, from the lily blending with the 
rose, to the deepest ebony. In form, from 
the symmetry of the Circassian and the 
classic Greek, to the lank and misshapen 
Australian. In stature, from the mammoth 
of men that stalks among the wilds of 
Patagonia, to the pigmy Laplander. In 
mind, from the philosopher, whose 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 101 



" Soul, on curious travel bent, ranges 
Through all the provinces of human thought, 
In each recess of space and time, at home, 
Familiar with their wonders," 



down to the savage, whose arithmetic goes 
not beyond the number of his fingers. 
Every nation and tribe has its traits, in 
which it differs from the rest ; and, in some 
of them, every generation its peculiarities, 
which distinguish it from the past. And, 
finally, in speech, — that medium of the ac- 
tion of mind on mind, — the hills and val- 
leys of the globe are scarcely more diversi- 
fied than the languages of those who in- 
habit them. 

Let us look at some of these diversities, 
as they stand related to the aim of the 
Christian ministry. And first, let us take 
a glance at the moral features of our own 
people. A people ever awake, full of in- 
quiry, and ever eager to improve their con- 
dition, one might justly expect, would spon- 
taneously discover the truth, be alive to its 
purifying influence, and adjust to its re- 
quirements the economy of their lives. 
And certain it is, that if there be a charac- 
9* 



102 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

ter more hopeful than those of the rest of 
the world, it is the inquisitive, the ener- 
getic and enterprising, which belongs to 
the American people. But alas ! this in- 
quisitiveness, this energy, are engaged and 
engrossed in other kinds of enterprise than 
that of seeking the blessings of the life 
eternal. The master passion of this nation 
is the lust of gain and power. It rales the 
poor, — it rules the rich ; and never says, 
of accumulation, "It is enough." It rules 
the ignorant, — it rules the learned ; and 
lays all learning and science under tribute 
to personal aggrandizement. The tenant 
of the humble cottage rises early to eat the 
bread of carefulness, that he may repose in 
a more respectable dwelling ; and the ten- 
ant of the commodious mansion is strug- 
gling upward towards a palace of marble. 
House is added to house, field is added to 
field, ship added to ship, and store added 
to store, without reference to the length of 
life, or the capacity of enjoyment ; as if 
time were our eternity, the world our hea- 
ven, and mammon our god. Eise ! is the 
national watchword ; and elevation is sy- 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 103 



nonymous with felicity. In the eager 
reaching forth to that which is before, the 
past is forgotten, and the present disre- 
garded. Precursors are envied ; rivals cir- 
cumvented ; and friends and kindred out- 
stripped, abandoned. 

Connected with this thirst for improve- 
ment of personal condition, and springing 
from the same cause, the possession of the 
power to change, is an absorbing interest in 
political affairs. The principle of the sove- 
reignty of the people has brought into 
being a nation of sovereigns, who, from the 
palace to the hovel, from the senate-chamber 
to the workshop, feel that the government 
of the nation rests upon their shoulders. 
" Myself and the state" engross the whole 
thought and feeling ; and " God and my 
neighbor" are left to nations less enlight- 
ened and free ! 

Shall we say, then, to the preacher of the 
gospel, "Your own 'Ephraim is joined to 
idols ; let him alone V " Shall we say to 
him : Go seek a more hopeful people, in 
other parts of Christendom ? a more con- 
genial soil for the seed of righteousness, in 



104 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

some foreign clime ? Shall we say to liim : 
Abandon the fevered inhabitants of this 
young republic, for the soberer population 
of older nations ? Cross, then, the Atlan- 
lic. Lift up your voice among the nations 
of Europe. Enter " the cities whose anti- 
quity is of ancient days ; whose merchants 
are princes ; whose traffickers are the ho- 
norable of the earth." Invite the British 
merchant to purchase your goodly pearls ; 
the capitalist to buy your "gold tried in 
the fire." Call the attention of titled 
beauty, arrayed with its " precious stones 
and pearls, fine linen and purple, silk and 
scarlet," to the white raiment of a Saviour's 
righteousness. Pass over, and bid the 
savans of France a welcome to the wisdom 
which is from above ; and her pleasure- 
loving people, to the " peace and joy in 
the Holy Ghost." Point the Switzer, as 
he feeds his flocks amid the crags of the 
Alps, and plants his scanty seed beneath 
the beetling ice-cliff*, to "the better land." 
Tell the Russian noble the blessings of be- 
coming Christ's servant ; and the Russian 
serf, that the Son of God offers him free- 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 



105 



dom. Bid the Italian lazaroni to the gos- 
pel feast ; and entreat the haughty Spa- 
niard to learn of him who was meek and 
lowly. Tell the heirs of royalty to cast 
their crowns before the King of kings ; 
and invite their marshaled legions to en- 
list under " the Captain of salvation." 

And is your enterprise more hopeful 
there ? no discouragements to contend with ? 
no obstacles to surmount ? Alas ! although, 
bv chanaino; vour hemisphere, you find 
yourself away from the feverish spirit of 
your own young land, and surrounded by 
men so greatly differing in language, man- 
ners, and habits of thought and feeling, 
you yet find they were born, and are living, 
no nearer heaven, while unrenewed, than 
those you left at home. If the eye is not 
directed, with engrossing expectation, to 
the future, it is still bent to earth. And, 
more than all, you find a "form of godli- 
ness," bedizened with the trappings of 
worldly grandeur, wedded in adulterous 
union to the civil power, protected by the 
sword, and, red with the blood of martyrs, 
frowning from her hoary fortress on free- 



106 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 



clom of action and of thought, and compel- 
ling the devotions of the people at her own 
regally-appointed altar. 

Leaving the pale of Christendom, the di- 
versities of character multiply before you ; 
but the habits, manners and institutions by 
which the nations are distinguished, appear 
like so many bulwarks of defence against 
the approach of the gospel. Yonder, 
where the tidings of peace were once pub- 
lished by the lips of apostles, sits, in dreamy 
indolence, the turbaned worshiper of Mo- 
hammed, holding, indeed, the cardinal 
truth of the divine unity, but " strong in 
faith" of the absurdities of the Koran, and 
looking for an eternity of sensual delight to 
succeed a life of sensual indulgence. Seated 
amid the ruins of art, industry and enter- 
prise, he fancies himself the predestined 
heir of paradise, and the appointed lord and 
tyrant of earth. "With his wives in his 
harem, and his slaves around him, — with 
his cimeter in his hand, the spoils of ruined 
provinces at his feet, and the crescent wav- 
ing above him, in token of his expectation 
that the religion of the Koran is to become 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 107 



the religion of the world, — how faint the 
hope appears, that the gospel which teaches 
to " deny ungodliness, and worldly lusts,' • 
and look for " a heaven wherein dwelleth 
righteousness, " will ever bring him an hum- 
ble disciple to the Saviour's feet ! 

Passing on to regions more remote, still 
new diversities appear. In the dim dis- 
tance of the East, the Chinese empire, with 
its minor peculiarities of tribe and clan, 
presents a character so broadly diverse from 
all we have yet seen, that if its distinction 
from the rest of mankind were elevation 
above them, it might well be called " the 
celestial." A population sufficiently nu- 
merous, of itself, to people a globe; with 
a pride of antiquity which looks on all 
other nations as in a comparative infancy ; 
whose arts and manners, having, in their 
own estimation, been perfected for hun- 
dreds of centuries, have been stereotyped, 
that they may admit of no change ; a people 
with a language so different from the other 
languages of the earth, that it seems to 
have been devised rather to defy than in- 
vite intercourse with the rest of mankind. 



108 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

Turning the eye from China to Japan, 
and the nations of Southern Asia, diversity 
still increases as the view extends. The 
nations of the Indies are emphatically na- 
tions of worshipers; every valley, and 
mountain, and river side, is studded with 
temples. Shall we pass by, and behold 
their devotions? Shall we listen to the 
confession of their faith ? Shall we follow 
them home, and observe their practice ? 
Their god is gilded marble ; their sacrifice, 
a child's or a parent's blood ! their faith, a 
doomed inhabitation of some brute or rep- 
tile ; and their hope, annihilation ! their 
practice, devoutly licentious, — habitually 
dishonest, — religiously cruel. Before we 
bring them under the power of the gospel, 
we must learn to speak in languages which 
bear no affinity to our own, and to impart 
the knowledge of the " true God and eter- 
nal life," of Christ and his ordinances, to 
people all whose religious terms are asso- 
ciated with the polluting ceremonies of 
idolatry. "We must deliver woman from 
slavery ; break the fetters of caste ; dissolve 
the spell of the Brahmin. We must arouse 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 



109 



the Hindoo from the torpors of tropical in- 
dolence ; draw the Karen from the worship 
of devils ; and, alas ! make the Japanese 
forget the name of Christian. 

And what do we behold in Africa ? 
Tribes, not only without God, but too de- 
graded and ignorant even for a systematic 
idolatry ; whose spirit within them is sunk 
too low even for the ferocity of the savage : 
and from whose very forms the lineaments 
of humanity seem vanishing. 

In short, the diversity existing among 
the inhabitants of the earth is all but end- 
less ; and we do not wonder that those, 
who confine their attention to the surface 
of things, should regard the project of 
bringing them all under a common influ- 
ence, — of leading them all to the know- 
ledge, and love, and obedience, of the same 
God ; to trust in the same Lord, embrace 
the same faith, and submit to the same 
baptism ; to love each other as brethren, 
and to look for a common salvation, — as 
wild and chimerical. 

Yet, amid all this variety, there is a com- 
mon nature. Thev are the offspring of 
"10 



110 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

the same Creator, who " hath made of one 
blood all nations of men, to dwell on the 
face of all the earth ;" and, in all their 
wanderings, in all their changes of civilized 
or savage life, the attributes which gave to 
man his rank, — which made him what he 
was, in the scale of being, when the first 
parent beheld, in his first-born child, his 
own likeness, — still remain. The laconic 
speech of the savage, when, stained with 
the blood of a treacherous and exterminat- 
ing war, he was led, a prisoner, into the 
presence of the President of the United 
States, was as true as it was lofty: U I am 
a man, and you are another!" Yes, the 
Indian, though he contends with the wolf 
for his meat, and slakes his thirst with the 
blood of his foe, is a man ! and the most re- 
fined and enlightened chief of the mightiest 
nation on earth is nothing more. Nothing 
has been more common, in all ages, than 
for men to misjudge each other. Every 
nation and tribe, while sufficiently ready to 
accredit itself with whatever is ornamental 
in human nature, has evinced a proneness 
to deny its existence in others ; and es- 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. Ill 

peeially in those with whom it has either 
never come into contact, or only in a way 
of collision. It was this propensity which, 
among the ancient inhabitants of Italy, 
peopled the island of Sicily with a race of 
Cyclops ; and which, in more recent times, 
in the .people of England, branded the 
French as " natural enemies/' A better 
acquaintance with his neighbor, however, 
convinced the Italian that the Sicilian had 
the same number of eyes with himself; 
and has shown the Briton that a French- 
man can love. 

The distinguishing character of man, as 
he is connected with this world, is, that he 
possesses a rational and moral nature. And, 
however modified his existence may be 
by civilization or the want of it, by know- 
ledge or the want of it, by religion or the 
want of it, he possesses the attributes which 
belong to his nature : attention, memory^ 
reflection, comparison, abstraction, gene- 
ralization ; a perception of beauty and fit- 
ness ; a consciousness of difference between 
right and wrong; the power of indefinite 
improvement ; and the capacity for joy and 



112 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MSN 

sorrow, hope and fear, gratitude and love. 
And as these are constituent elements of 
his nature, as man, they belong to all, how- 
ever imperfect their development, however 
stinted their growth, however feeble their 
action. 

With respect to his intellectual faculties, 
however, our topic does not lead us to 
speak. It is indeed the possession of these, 
stamped with the seal of immortality, that 
renders him worthy the effort which Chris- 
tianity makes for his renovation. It is in 
virtue of these, that the gospel is applica- 
ble to him. But we speak of his moral 
faculties, — we speak of the affections of 
the heart ; and we affirm, that these affec- 
tions exist in all men, and that no barbar- 
ism, no tyranny, no superstition, has been 
able to obliterate them. However chilled 
and torpid, there is life ; and Christian be- 
nevolence can wake it. 

Permit us to relieve your attention with 
the recital of some of the proofs which have 
been famished of the truth of this position. 
You are acquainted with the story of 
"William Penn, and the early settlement of 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 113 

Pennsylvania. While our Puritan fathers 
in New England thought it necessary to 
guard their homes with fortress and fire- 
lock against surprise by tomahawk and 
scalping-knife, he, attentive to the repre- 
sentations of his Bible, presumed the ex- 
istence of a human heart beneath a savage 
exterior, and threw himself, unarmed, with, 
all the destinies of his colony, into their 
midst. He went amongst them personally, 
and mingled freely with them. He ate 
with them of their parched corn and ho- 
miny. He walked with them, and sat with 
them on the ground, and smoked their pipe 
of peace ; and so affected were they by the 
spirit of kindness they saw in him, that the 
stern warriors literally leaped, like children, 
with the emotions of delight. He entered 
into treaty with them for the purchase of a 
part of their lands, and a joint possession 
of the remainder. On the day appointed, 
an innumerable multitude of the Indians 
were seen, with their dark visages and 
brandished arms, moving in vast swarms 
in the depth of the woods which then cov- 
ered the site of Philadelphia, towards the 
10* 



114 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

bank of the Delaware, to the shade of a 
prodigious elm-tree, the appointed place of 
rendezvous. 

On the other hand, William Penn, with 
a moderate attendance of friends, unarmed, 
without banners, mace or guard, having 
in his hand a roll of parchment, on which 
was engrossed the confirmation of the treaty 
of purchase and amity, advanced to meet 
them. As soon as he drew near the spot 
where the Sachems were assembled, the 
whole multitude of the Indians threw down 
their weapons, and seated themselves on 
the ground in groups, each under his own 
chieftain ; and the presiding chief intimated 
to William Penn that the nations were 
ready to hear him. He began : " The 
Great Spirit, who made us and you, who 
rules the heavens and the earth, and who 
knows the inmost thoughts of man, knows 
that I and my friends have a hearty desire 
to live in peace and friendship with you, 
and to serve you to the utmost of our 
power. It is not our custom to use hostile 
weapons against our fellow-creatures, for 
which reason we have come unarmed. Our 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 115 



object is not to do injury, and thus provoke 
the Great Spirit, but to do good. We are 
met on the broad pathway of good faith 
and good-will, so that no advantage is to 
be taken on either side ; but all is to be 
openness, brotherhood and love. ~VTe will 
not call you children, or brothers only : for, 
often, parents are apt to whip their child- 
ren too severely; and brothers sometimes 
will differ. Neither will I compare the 
friendship between myself and you to a 
chain ; for the rain may sometimes rust it, 
or a tree may fall and break it. But I shall 
consider you as the same flesh and blood 
with the Christians." 

He then presented the parchment to the 
chief Sachem, and desired him and the 
other Sachems to preserve it carefully for 
three generations, that their children might 
know what had passed between them, just 
as if he should remain to repeat it. The 
Indians, in return for these proofs of con- 
fidence, justice and kindness, pledged 
themselves to live in love with William 
Penn, and his children, so long as the sun 
and moon should endure. And, for more 



116 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 



than seventy years, — so long as the just and 
humane policy of the founder controlled the 
colony, — they never violated their pledge.* 

Depravity has probably never done more 
to blot out from a people everything human, 
than it has done in the inhabitants of New 
Zealand. War, from time immemorial, 
has been their work, their pastime ; and 
when a motive of revenge was wanting, 
cannibalism, — a hunger and thirst for hu- 
man flesh and blood, that most inhuman 
of all inhumanities, — impelled them to the 
destruction of each other. And, so inve- 
terate was the habit of murder, that the 
sight of blood, or the possession of an im- 
plement of death, awakened, as in the tiger, 
the thirst to kill and devour. From such 
a race, pity herself might have turned away 
in disgust, and faith in the possibility of 
renovation, given place to despair. 

Yet, even there, the mother weeps over 
the grave of her offspring; even there, 
childhood has its heart of love and glee ; 

* Edinburgh. Review of Clarkson's Life of William 
Penn. Vol. 21, pp. 458-460. 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 117 

even there, the ties of kindred bind hearts 
together in sympathy, and long-severed 
friends rush into each others' arms and weep 
for joy. And even there, the stranger and 
foreigner, who could show that he had a 
heart to love and trust them, and who went 
among them on an errand of peace, has 
slept in safety in the midst of their war- 
camps. 

A destructive war, which had begun in 
the capture and burning of a British ship 
and the murder of her crew, had been car- 
ried on for many years between the people 
of the Bay of Islands and those of Whan- 
garooa, when Mr. Marsden, who had just 
arrived on the island, but of whose kind 
feeling towards them they had had evidence 
through one of the chiefs who had known 
him in New South Wales, determined to 
interpose his endeavors for the restoration 
of peace. He accordingly visited their 
camps, introduced the subject of putting 
an end to all hostilities, and had the satis- 
faction to hear them declare that they were 
ready for peace, and wished to fight no 
more. Having been so kindly received. 



118 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

and so successful in the object of his mis- 
sion, lie determined to pass the night 
among them. He took his evening meal 
in the camp of the one party, and went to 
spend the night in the camp of the other. 
He sat down among the chiefs, and their 
people, and waited the approach of the 
hour for sleep. 

" As the evening advanced," he observes, 
"the people began to retire to rest in dif- 
ferent groups. About eleven o'clock, Mr. 
Nicholas and I wrapped ourselves up in our 
great coats, and prepared for rest also. 
The chief directed me to lie by his side, 
The night was clear, and the stars shone 
bright, and the sea in our front was smooth. 
Around us were numerous spears stuck up 
in the ground ; and groups of natives were 
lying in all directions upon the grass. 

"I viewed our present situation with 
sensations and feelings that I cannot ex- 
press. Surrounded by cannibals who had 
massacred and devoured my countrymen, 
I wondered much at the mysteries of Pro- 
vidence, how these things could be. I did 
not sleep much : my mind was too seriously 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 119 

occupied by the present scene, and by the 
new and strange ideas which it naturally 
excited." 

"Well might he be filled with new and 
strange emotions in circumstances so pe- 
culiar and untried. But although he felt 
called on to acknowledge his obligation to 
a superintending Providence for his safety 
beneath the wing of the cannibal chieftain ; 
yet he did not feel obliged to refer that 
safety to a supernatural interposition of it : 
for although, as to the ferocity of spirit and 
the love of blood of those around him, he 
might well have compared his situation to 
that of the prophet Daniel among the lions ; 
he had proceeded on his adventurous ex- 
periment in the belief that there had been 
given to the savage, as there was to the 
lion of the prophet's vision, " the heart of 
a man." 

We have referred to the degradation of 
Africa. Low, however, as her tribes have 
sunk in ignorance and wretchedness, the 
African has still left him a heart to feel and 
suffer like other men. And when Christian 
philanthropy shall wake to redress his 



120 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 



wrongs, and lie sees that his long night of 
woe is breaking before "the day-spring 
from on high," she will find that he has a 
heart to rejoice. 

One of the most revolting and hopeless 
tribes of all that continent, was the Bosche- 
men ; a people among the barrens in the 
region of Zak river, in South-Eastern Af- 
rica. 

Says Mr. Kicherer, whose account of 
them we quote from the Origin and His- 
tory of Missions : " They have no idea of a 
Supreme Being: and, consequently, they 
practise no kind of worship. They have a 
superstitious reverence, however, for an in- 
sect known by the name of the creeping 
leaf; a sight of which they consider as an 
indication of something fortunate ; and, to 
kill it, they suppose will bring a curse upon 
the perpetrator. 

They have also some notion of an evil 
spirit, which occasions diseases and other 
mischief; and, to counteract his evil pur- 
poses, a certain description of men are ap- 
pointed to blow with a humming noise over 
the sick, for hours together. 



A GROUXD FOR EXCOURAGEMEXT. 121 

" Their mode of life is extremely wretched 
and disgusting. Utter strangers to cleanli- 
ness, they never wash their flesh, but de- 
light in smearing their bodies with the fat 
of animals. They form their huts by dig- 
ging a hole in the ground, about three feet 
deep, and thatching it over with reeds; 
which are not, however, impervious to the 
rain. Here they lie close to each other, 
like pigs in a sty; and they are so ex- 
tremely indolent, that they will remain for 
days together without food, rather than 
take the pains to procure it, "WTien con- 
strained by extreme hunger, to go out in 
quest of provisions, they evince much dex- 
terity in destroying the various animals 
with which their country abounds : but if 
they do not happen to procure any of these, 
they live upon snakes, mice, and almost any- 
thing they can find. The men have several 
wives ; but conjugal affection is little known, 
and they are total strangers to domestic 
happiness. They take little care of their 
children; and, when they correct them, 
they almost kill them by their severity. In 
fact, they will destroy their offspring on a 
11 



122 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

variety of occasions, as when they are in 
want of food ; or when an infant happens 
to be ill shaped ; or when the father has 
forsaken the mother. In either of these 
cases, they will strangle them, or cast them 
away in the desert. There are even in- 
stances of parents throwing their tender off- 
spring to the hnngry lion. In general, the 
children cease to be the object of maternal 
care as soon as they are able to crawl in 
the field. They go out every morning; 
and when they return in the evening, a lit- 
tle milk, or a piece of meat, and an old 
sheep-skin to lie on, are all they have to 
expect. The Boschemen frequently forsake 
their aged relatives, when removing from 
place to place for the sake of hunting. In 
this case, they leave the old person with a 
piece of meat and an ostrich egg-shell full 
of water. As soon as this little stock is 
exhausted, the poor, devoted creature must 
perish by hunger, or become a prey to wild 
beasts." 

We have here a people who seem to have 
nothing that belongs to humanity left them ; 
who appear to have been born " without 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 123 

natural affection;" and whose tender mer- 
cies are cruel. 

Perhaps, of those who have perused this 
description, there may be some who have 
been accustomed to look on the missionary 
enterprise as the offspring of fanaticism, 
and who are now prepared to ask with tri- 
umph, if the spirit of missions has ever so 
inspired any sober man as to nerve him to 
make the endeavor, or to awaken in him 
the hope, for their reformation ? We answer, 
Yes; both. And do you ask the result? 
Enough of the beginning can be told to 
show that God " hath fashioned their hearts" 
like those of other men; enough to en- 
courage the prayers and the efforts of Chris- 
tians ; but the remit must be learned from 
the sons; in heaven. 

Soon after the arrival of the missionaries 
at the place of their destination, on the Zak 
river, they were visited by a party of Bos- 
chemen who were anxious to understand 
the object of their settlement. At first, 
they feared some design against their li- 
berty or their lives. As a proof of their 
mistrust, it is stated, in the "Missionary 



124 THE MORAL LIKEXESS OF MEN 

Transactions," that Mr. Kicherer the mis- 
sionary, hoping to conciliate the affections 
of these wild men, invited a number of 
them to partake of a little repast which he 
had provided. Having cut up a large cake, 
he presented a piece to each of them ; but 
not an individual ventured to taste it. Sus- 
pecting that they were apprehensive of poi- 
son, he took of it himself, and ate before 
them. He then stated that he had called 
them together to assure them of his friend- 
ship, and to inform them that there was a 
Saviour, called the bread of life, of whom 
Hottentots as well as others might freely 
partake. Their suspicions were removed, 
and the missionary's token of love was re- 
ceived by every individual, with evident 
satisfaction. From this time, the number 
of Boschemen who visited the missionaries 
increased; and they proceeded with their 
work of explaining to those perishing crea- 
tures the grace of the Lord Jesus. 

When they were first told of a God, and 
of the resurrection of the dead, they knew 
not how to express their astonishment in 
terms sufficiently strong, that they should 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 125 

have remained such a length of time with- 
out one idea of the Creator and Preserver 
of all things. Some of the people now be- 
gan to pray, with apparent earnestness, and 
with the most affecting simplicity. "O 
Lord Jesus Christ," they would say, "thou 
hast made the sun, the moon, the hills, the 
rivers, and the bushes ; therefore thou hast 
the power of changing my heart. be 
pleased to make it entirely new !" 

Some of them said, that the sorrow which 
they felt on account of their sins prevented 
them from sleeping, and constrained them 
to rise and pour out their souls in supplica- 
tion before the Lord ; and they declared, 
that even in their hunting expeditions, they 
sometimes felt an irresistible impulse to 
prostrate themselves before the throne of 
grace, and to pray for a renewed heart.* 

We have spoken of the obstacles which 
a systematic idolatry has thrown in the way 
of the gospel, in the East. We readily 
grant they are many and powerful. Not 
only are the basest passions bribed into a 

* Smith and Choules's Orig. and Hist. Miss., Vol. I., 
p. 420. 

11* 



126 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 



support of their religions, by being fed with 
the sacrifices of their devotion, but a dark- 
ened judgment and a bewildered conscience 
take part against us. But. after all. are the 
theoretical and systematic idolatries of Asia 
more powerful than were those of Europe ? 
Is Siva a greater god than Mars ? Is 
Brahma mightier than Jupiter? If sen- 
suality makes part of the service of the 
Asiatic altar, let it be remembered that 
Venus was often the deity of the European 
temple. If the theory and system of error 
have woven the web of thought for the Asi- 
atic, and converted his language into a veil 
to shut out the light, let it be remembered 
that such was the magic influence of the 
idolatry of Greece, that it maintained its 
empire over the reason and conscience, 
when civilization and science had shed their 
broadest beams over her land, and had made 
the Grecian mind a prodigy of intellectual 
power. 

"When the apostle proclaimed in her citie3 
the truth of " The unknown God," he found 
their inhabitants sufficiently ready, indeed, 
to hear ; but they were seeking a new phi- 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 127 

losophy. He told them of him who is om- 
nipresent and unchangeable, — the " One 
who inhabiteth eternity;" but they thought 
of Fate. He told them of heaven; but 
their imagination wandered among the 
heroes of Elysium. He told them of pro- 
phecy ; but they were thinking of auguries. 
He told them of the divinity of J esus ; and 
he found them preparing for him a place in 
the Pantheon ! But, when he told them 
of the resurrection of the dead, he an- 
nounced a truth which had no counterpart 
in their mythology, and which, therefore, 
they could not misunderstand. But it ac- 
corded neither with their religion nor their 
philosophy, and they turned away in scorn. 
Yet the gospel triumphed in Greece. Truth 
triumphed over error, — holiness over sin. 
The altars of Venus were forsaken ; Mars 
ceased to be invoked on the field of battle ; 
and J upiter fell from heaven. Christ tvas 
enthroned in the Pantheon ; but he reigned 
alone ! 

"We are aware, it may be said, that 
the miraculous gifts, with which the first 
preachers of the gospel were endowed, gave 



128 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

to Christianity, in its origin, an advantage 
which it does not now possess. So far as 
the facility of a rapid diffusion of the truth, 
an exemption from error in its statement, 
and a conviction of the attendance of an 
extra-human power are concerned, the ob- 
servation is true. But let it be remembered 
that among idolaters the power of perform- 
ing miracles was misunderstood. The heal- 
ing of a cripple at Lystra was readily 
referred to superhuman agency. But not- 
withstanding the people had just been 
listening to the gospel from the lips of an 
apostle, "when they saw what Paul had 
done, they lifted up their voices, saying, in 
the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come 
down to us, in the likeness of men. And 
they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, 
Mercurius." And with the most earnest 
remonstrances, and the most solemn pro- 
testations of the aj)ostles, that they were 
men of like passions with themselves, "they 
scarce restrained the people that they had 
not done sacrifice unto them." The faith 
of the Gentile came rather by hearing the 
word of God than by a sight of his power. 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 129 

Christianity, then, has still, essentially, 
the same powers for conflict with "the 
vanities of the Gentiles," which it ever had ; 
and, what it did in Europe, it can do in 
Asia. The records of missionary labor 
abundantly show that it has the same na- 
ture to work on there, which it had in 
Greece and Italy, in Gaul and Britain. 
Deep debasement there is : ignorance and 
indolence, pride, pollution, and cruelty. 
But though idolatry has held its reign of 
terror over the conscience, and its reign of 
darkness over the understanding, for al- 
most forty centuries, it has not yet been 
able to crush out from its victims the life 
of the heart. Humanity suffers and bleeds 
at every pore : but she has not expired. 
Faint and bewildered as she is, she can yet 
recognize the look of kindness ; and feel 
the reviving touch of tenderness and mercy 2 
and whenever she has beheld Christianity 
in her own pure robe approaching, and 
could see the signet of "peace and good- 
will" on her brow, and the oil and wine of 
the good Samaritan in her hand, she has 
hailed her deliverer welcome. The genu- 



130 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

ine spirit of Christianity, exemplified in the 
piety and zeal of Xavier, won the listening 
ear of thousands, on the coast of Cormorin, 
in Ceylon, in Cochin, the Molucca islands, 
and Japan, to the voice of instruction ; and 
the mere semblance of it, in the intriguing 
later Jesuits, conquered the monarch of the 
Chinese empire. Those fruits of the Chris- 
tian spirit, — integrity and love of man, — 
never drew from the hearts of any people 
in Christendom a richer tribute of affection 
and confidence than, in the person of Swartz, 
they drew from the idolaters of the coast 
of Coromandel. Such was the high and 
universal estimation in which that man of 
God was held, that a military officer as- 
sures us that the knowledge and integrity 
of this irreproachable missionary retrieved 
the character of Europeans from the im- 
putation of general depravity. And even 
Hyder Ali, though a fierce Mohammedan 
usurper, while negotiating a treaty, was 
heard to say, " Send me Swartz ; send me 
the Christian missionary ; for him only can 
I trust!" 

The effect of these virtues manifested in 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 131 



tlie lives of our own missionaries, upon the 
people and the authorities of Burmah, is 
too familiar to your minds to require more 
than allusion here. The graves of a Board- 
man and. of a Mrs. Judson are often be- 
dewed with the tears of affection from eyes 
which have not yet learned to follow them 
up to their rest in heaven. 

But sufficient has perhaps been said of 
Pagan nations. Our range of observation 
will not be fully retraced, however, till we 
have sought the existence of the same moral 
elements amid the apostasies which have 
usurped the seat of primitive Christianity. 
When we read the book of the Koran, 
which contains the faith of the Mohamme- 
dan ; and then turn to the book of history 
which has recorded his practice, and see 
how emphatically the religion of the Turk, 
the Persian and the Arab is a religion of 
sensuality and blood ; and then turn to the 
Apocalypse, and read the prophetic descrip- 
tion of that apostasy as covering the earth 
with an army of locusts from the bottom- 
less pit, with tails of scorpions, and lions' 
teeth, appointed to devour ; we confess we 



132 THE MORAL LIKENESS OP MEN 



could almost forgive the Christian mission- 
ary, if his courage proved unequal to the 
work of calling them to repentance and 
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

But the labors of the devote^ Martyn, 
and of the equally devoted but eccentric 
TTolff, have shown that the Christian mis- 
sionary may with safety commend the re- 
ligion of his Master to Mohammedans, by 
precept, if he will take sufficient care to 
commend it by example. The proofs to 
this point, which are scattered through the 
journals of the latter, are so numerous, that 
we feel at a loss among them for selection. 
"When we have given you a specimen, how- 
ever, of the fearless faithfulness, combined 
with an open and affectionate manner, 
which he displayed ; and then tell you that 
he entered into argument with Dervishes 
and Mullahs, with princes, and with pil- 
grims of the Mohammedan faith, and 
traveled unharmed in Egypt, in Abys- 
sinia, in Asia Minor, in Armenia, in Persia, 
in Khorassaun, Toorkestaun, Bokhara, Ca- 
bool, Cashmere, and Arabia, though some- 
times in peril from robbers and fanatics, — 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 133 



with the former of whom, strange enough to 
say, he found safety by an appeal to the prin- 
ciple of reverence, and with the latter to the 
principle of fear; — you will begin to sus- 
pect that if we have not accredited the na- 
tions of the crescent with too much of what 
belongs to the scorpion-locust, we have ac- 
corded to them too little of what belongs 
to man. 

The Khans of Khorassaun are hereditary 
chieftains, nominally subject to the Schah 
of Persia; governing each his own ter- 
ritory, and having the power of life and 
death over their subjects, and, like the an- 
cient feudal lords of Europe, often bitter 
enemies to their sovereign and to each 
other. It was in traveling through the 
territories of these Mohammedan chiefs, 
that the following scene and conversation 
occurred. Mr. "Wolff having arrived in a 
desert place, was unable to induce the Mus- 
sulman, in whose company and under whose 
guidance he had engaged to travel from 
Teheraun to Herat, to return him the money 
with which he had entrusted him ; and was 
obliged to go to Burjund, a town in which 



134 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

no Englishman had ever been, under the 
government of a Khan of the name and 
title of Asaad Ullah Elan to whom he had 
a letter of introduction. The Khan took 
no notice of his letter. The camel-drivers 
who had taken him thither, having been 
refused a present, probably because he had 
none to give, reported him and his servant 
as having been in the service of Abbas 
Mirza, and as having run away with twelve 
thousand tomauns. Upon the strength of 
this representation, Mr. Wolff was sent for, 
after he had left the town, and overtaken 
by two soldiers, and brought back to the 
town a prisoner. " On the 29th of Octo- 
ber," he observes, "I was called before 
Asaad Ullah Khan. The fort in which he 
resided, was filled 'with rough and uncul- 
tivated people of Belujestan, soldiers of 
Khorassaun, and Persians. Entering the 
dark room, I saw Asaad Ullah Khan upon 
the floor. Around him were seated Mo- 
hammed ResaKhan, and several Mullahs." 
The Mullahs are the priests of the Moham- 
medan faith. Asaad Ullah Elian asked him 
to sit down near him and Abd Resa Khan. 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 135 

Asaad. What is your profession ? 

Mr. W. (Lifting 'up his Bible.) This is 
my profession : the proclamation of the Bi- 
ble and the Gospel among the Jews, and to 
converse with all nations about God. 

Abd Besa Khan. With what kind of de- 
nominations have you conversed ? 

Mr. W. With Mohammedan Mullahs, at 
Sheeras, Ispahan, Erivan, Oormia, and 
other places ; with the Jews of the Turkish 
and Persian empires ; with Yeseedes, Gue- 
bres and Ali Ullahe. 

Abd Besa Khan. Are the Guebres in the 
right ? 

Mr. W. Ko. 

Abd Besa Khan. jSTow say the truth, are 
we in the right ? 

Mr. W. I consider those only in the right 
who believe in the Bible and the Gospel. 

Asaad Ullah Khan. Why do you not be- 
lieve in Mohammed? 

Mr. W. According to the Gospel, none 
can be as great as Jesus was. 

Asaad Ullah Khan. Is Mohammed not 
predicted in your books ? 

Mr. TF. He is predicted as the chastiser 



136 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

of evil-doers : in his time Christians were 
fallen into idolatry, and God therefore sent 
Mohammed to chastise them. 

Mohammed Ullah Khan. Was he no 
prophet ? 

Mr. W. No. 

Aid Besa Khan. Read me some parts 
of the Gospel. Mr. W. read and translated 
the fifth chapter of Matthew. a Read me 
some parts of the books of Moses." He 
read and translated the fifteenth chapter of 
Exodus. 

They then asked him to write down what 
he had translated : instead of doing that he 
gave them Arabic Bibles, and Arabic and 
Persian Testaments. 

He retired: and instead of being con- 
demned as a refugee and robber ; instead 
of suffering as an unbeliever; instead of 
being required to save his life by abjuring 
his religion ; he received, four days after- 
wards, a request from the two Khans and 
the chief Mullah of the Court that he would 
send them a list of the prophecies respect- 
ing the coming of Christ, and the appear- 
ance of Antichrist ! 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 



137 



But time forbids a further detail ; nor is 
it necessary. If we find evidence, amid all 
the deformity and ruin which sin has 
effected, that it has still left what may con- 
stitute a creature, man, — if it has still left 
a consciousness of a difference between 
right and wrong, if it has still left the 
power to recognize integrity and confide in 
it, and if it has still left a capability of 
being moved and won by kindness, even 
in the most debased tribes of Africa, in the 
sensual and blood-thirsty worshipers of the 
Arabian impostor, in " the dark idolater" 
of the East, and in the unschooled savage 
of our own primitive wilds ; it cannot be 
necessary to detain you with proof that the 
corruptions of Christianity which have per- 
vaded Europe, have still left a basis on 
which a pure Christianity may be reared 
by missionary labor and love. 

Here, then, we take our stand, and light 
the torch of hope ; here we would kindle 
the fire of zeal and enterprise for the church 
of God. With all the diversities of civil- 
ized and barbarous and savage life, with 
all the gradations of intellect, with all the 



138 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 



extremes in morals, with all the peculi- 
arities of mental association, with all the 
varieties of taste and habits of life, from 
the palace of European refinement to the 
Kraal of the Hottentot, human nature is 
every where essentially the same. In every 
clime, in every condition, it is sadly broken, 
defaced and polluted. In some, indeed, it 
appears much more so than in others ; but 
amid its most shattered ruins we discover 
a capability of restoration. The elements 
are there; and the, gospel, entering their 
chaos, may work a new creation of more 
than primitive dignity, beauty and glory. 

The moral likeness of men affords en- 
couragement to missionary labor, by allow- 
ing us to assume the existence of a basis for 
action in every class, of every clime, and to 
prejudge its form and character. So that if 
the work of evangelizing the world were 
now to be begun, if no experiment had yet 
tested the power of the gospel on foreign 
or on savage mind, yet the knowledge of 
the fact that God " hath fashioned their 
hearts alike," that they remain essentially 
alike amid all the changes that have passed 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 139 



m their condition, should inspire us with 
confidence of success; and the conversion 
of a single soul to God, from any one class 
whatever, should be taken as a pledge of 
the triumph of the gospel over the whole. 

The missionary may go to the remotest 
clime, where nature has put on an aspect 
most diverse from what she wears in his 
native land ; he may pitch his tent among 
those who burrow with the hyena and the 
jackal, whose feasts are human flesh and 
blood, or the vulture's tainted prey, whose 
gods are reptiles or devils, whose rites of 
worship are directed by rage, revenge and 
lust, and the victims of whose altars are 
their parents or their children, — and there 
singling out the most revolting object 
among them, he may be assured that be- 
neath his naked leathern breast there beats 
a heart, where hope, and fear, and joy, and 
sorrow flow, and which, though choked by 
pollution, and chilled and frozen, it may 
be, by long-practised cruelties, can be made 
to give forth a stream of love. 

The view we have taken may serve too, 
to guide missionary effort. It shows us 



140 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

the existence of common characteristics in 
the midst of an almost endless diversity of 
appearances. It is no wonder that philoso- 
phy and legislation have been appalled, as 
they have walked around the wide circum- 
ference of human character, and beheld the 
variety and force of the torrents that were 
bursting up and sweeping over the face of 
human society. It is no wonder that, in 
the attempt to stop one and to purify 
another, they have had so little success. If 
we were obliged to find a sj^stem of instru- 
mentalities, and adjust them to these end- 
less diversities, we might well despair. But 
God has taught us to disregard these diver- 
sities of the surface as but the accidents of 
human nature. He has taught us that the 
issues of life are out of the heart, and that 
the central source is the same in all. To 
that source, then, must the missioDary ad- 
vance, in simple reliance on God's own 
testimony concerning its nature and suscep- 
tibilities. Its existence and character he 
must assume ; and, alike undeceived by 
the blandishments of polished life, and un- 
dismayed by savage ferocity, and undis- 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 141 

couraged by pagan blindness, lie must seek 
access to the heart. And, if he bears an 
open breast that shows his own glowing 
with the desire of peace on earth, and with 
good-will to man, he may be assured he 
will find it. 

The knowledge most important for the 
successful prosecution of his work, then, 
after the knowledge of Christ and him 
crucified, is the knowledge of human na- 
ture in the deep fountain of all its action, — 
the heart. He may learn the manners, cus- 
toms and habits of the people to whom he 
would bear the tidings of salvation; he 
should do so ; they form the moral geogra- 
phy of the land into which he wishes to 
enter. It may serve to point out the rea- 
diest avenue to the seat of empire ; and it 
will impress him with the great need there 
is of subduing and giving new law to the 
territory. But, if he does not study human 
nature in its grand, universal characteris- 
tics, — if he does not rightly understand what 
belongs to man, as man, — if he does not 
adventure an approach to the heart, assum- 
ing the existence, in all, not only of that 



142 THE MORAL LIKENESS OF MEN 

which constitutes its need, but of that which 
constitutes its suscejrtibility, his knowledge 
will be of little avail. " To the heart " then, 
should be his motto ; to win and open the 
heart should be his aim. And when that 
citadel is thrown open to himself, he may 
hope for its surrender to God. 

He must not, indeed, forget his depend- 
ence on the divine blessing for the success 
of his embassy. It has not been given to 
him to change the heart : though he may 
win its affection, a higher power than his 
must make it new. Yet let him remem- 
ber, for his encouragement, that God has 
given the heathen to his Son for his inheri- 
tance ; and that the word which he preaches 
is the appointed instrument for their salva- 
tion : that it has already proved mighty 
through God to the pulling down of some 
of the strongest holds that sin has ever 
reared ; and that, though he may not pos- 
sess the powers of an apostle, success is 
" not by might, nor by power" of man, but 
by the Spirit of the Lord. And, more 
than all, let him remember the promise 
appended to his commission : " Preach the 



A GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. 



143 



gospel to every creature: — Lo, I am with 
you V 

We may not close without adverting to 
the encouragement which the view we have 
taken presents to those of you who antici- 
pate a ministry among our own people. 
You will not fulfill your commission if you 
preach to those only whose characters have 
been formed under the influence of early 
religious culture ; and who come to listen 
to you, within the walls of your churches, 
Thousands and tens of thousands of our 
people have forsaken the sanctuary ; have 
broken through the restraints of the Sab- 
bath ; and stand before vou with the for- 
bidding aspect of open rejecters of the 
authority of God. They have counted the 
blood of Calvary as a common thing, and 
have trodden it under foot. The thunders 
of Sinai they have defied: and have 
laughed, and reveled, and slept beneath 
them all. You may be tempted, as you see 
them " set their mouth against the hea- 
vens," to suppose that all your attempts for 
their conversion would be both useless, and 
perilous ; and may be ready to shrink from 



14-1 THE MORAL LIKENESS OE MEN 

the only means they have left yon, of 
bringing them into subjection to the 
authority of Christ. — direct personal con- 
tact. Yet fear them not, they are but 
men : and they are no less. Approach 
them : not with the air of challenge to 
combat ; not with a demand of deference 
for your office ; not with professions of 
saintliness ; not with menace ; but with 
the open, trusting heart of a friend bent on 
an act of kindness. Let it be manifest that 
you love them. Bring; your own heart, 
warm with the pure charities of the gos- 
pel, into contact with theirs : and, though 
all other methods of subduing may fail, 
you may hope for the blessing of success on 
this. The prophet's staff was laid upon 
the dead in vain ; and affection mourned 
the spirit as beyond recall : but when the 
man of God brought " mouth to mouth, 
and eye to eye, and hand to hand," and his 
heart went out in prayer, the flesh grew 
warm with the prophet s own vitality ; and 
the dead was brought to life. 



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